A military court in Myanmar has sentenced 11 anti-junta dissidents, including seven university students, to death, local media and student sources reported on Thursday.
The sentences, handed down on 30 November in Yangon’s Insein prison, come after military authorities executed four activists last July, the country’s first use of the death penalty since 1988.
Seven students at Dagon University in Yangon, arrested on April 21, were sentenced to death on charges of murder, the university’s Students’ Union said on social media.
They are accused of killing the manager of a Burmese bank on April 18.
According to Burmese media outlet Khit Khit, four other youths were also sentenced to death on Wednesday on charges of involvement in the murder of an official.
The European Union, the UN and the United States, among others, strongly condemned the Burmese junta for the executions in July of former National League for Democracy MP Phyo Zeyar Thaw, writer and veteran activist Ko Jimmy, as well as two other activists Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw.
Since the military seized power in a coup in 2021, a total of 128 people have been sentenced to death, according to data from Myanmar’s Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners (AAPP).
The army justifies the coup by an alleged massive fraud during the November 2020 elections, whose result has been annulled and in which the party of the deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi swept, as it did in 2015, with the endorsement of international observers.
More than 2,500 people have been killed since the coup by the brutal repression by security forces, who have fired to kill peaceful and unarmed protesters, and more than 13,000 have been arrested, according to AAPP data.
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