World

A hip-hop pioneer who vowed to “never surrender” and a democracy activist who said prison was his second home — Myanmar’s execution of two prominent democracy fighters will only keep the flame of defiance burning, their families say.  

AFP looks at lives of Kyaw Min Yu — better known as “Ko Jimmy” — and Phyo Zeya Thaw, whose executions sparked shock and anger in Myanmar and around the world.

– ‘Never surrender’ –

Phyo Zeya Thaw burst on to the public stage in the early 2000s as a dragon-tattooed hip-hop pioneer whose subversive rhymes targeted the then-ruling junta.

The band skirted the military’s notorious censors by circulating bootlegged copies of songs recorded in underground studios or performing in private stage shows.

“We will never change, never give up, never surrender,” his band “Acid” rap in one song.  

“We will come out in full force in every tomorrow.”

He was jailed in 2008 for membership of an illegal organisation and possession of foreign currency and later told AFP that democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi — his “real life hero” — helped him get through three years in jail.

He later became close to Suu Kyi, travelling with her to Europe in 2012 where she finally collected the Nobel prize that thrust her into the international limelight two decades earlier.

In the 2015 elections won by her National League for Democracy, the former junta prisoner won a seat in the military-built capital of Naypyidaw.

“You’re very young, you’re a hip-hop artist and you’re an ex-prisoner. How can you be an MP?” he told AFP in an interview after his election win. 

“That’s something I hear quite a lot.”

He was arrested by the junta in November last year and accused of orchestrating several attacks on regime forces, including a gun attack on a commuter train in Yangon that killed five policemen.

Following a closed trial, he was sentenced to death in January.

“My son was not a thief or a thug,” his mother told Radio Free Asia after news of the executions.

“I am proud of him for giving his life for the country… If I could get his ashes or remains, I would like to make a tomb for him and then put an inscription on it.” 

– ‘Never die in our hearts’ –

Kyaw Min Yu — known as “Ko Jimmy” — rose to prominence during Myanmar’s 1988 student uprising against the country’s previous military regime.

The writer and organiser spent more than a dozen years in prison under the previous junta for his pro-democracy activism, calling detention his “second home”.

But jail only made him more of a steadfast champion of democracy for his people.

“The government tries to keep them out,” he told AFP in 2006 as he organised a campaign during a rare stretch of freedom. 

But “they are always looking for a way to participate in politics”. 

Prison love letters saw romance blossom with fellow activist Nilar Thein, and led to their marriage shortly after they were released in 2004.

Months after their daughter was born he was arrested again during the monk-led “Saffron” protests in 2007, and the pair were not reunited until they were both pardoned in a 2012 amnesty. 

His death was “blatant murder,” his wife told RFA.

“He has written a good record for himself and he will never die in our hearts.”

There is little left of Soledar. A church, a few food shops and an ironmonger in a basement.

Located right next to the front line, this mining town in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region — where several thousand people still live — has been under constant shelling for more than three months.

The terrifying sounds of explosions break the silence at regular intervals in the now ghostly town, whose name translates as “Gift of Salt” after a giant salt mine on the outskirts.

The mine, managed by Ukrainian company Artemsol, normally produces millions of tons a year and is also a tourist attraction known for its “fairytale salt sculptures” according to the brochures.

Soledar, which had 15,000 inhabitants before the war, is also known for an underground sanatorium to treat pulmonary diseases.

That was before the invasion.

Soldar found itself on the path of Russian troops  pushing to take over the Donetsk region and came under fire from both sides.

The mine, struck several times, is now closed.

Many inhabitants have fled. According to the local residents who have remained, there are only some 2,000 people left fending for themselves.

The houses along the main street are half destroyed or blackened by smoke.

The cultural centre has been destroyed and its ruins still smell of smoke. Papers can be seen scattered in the ruins and a phone handset lies on a desk.

“It happened on the night of July 9th to 10th. That night, a dozen missiles struck Soledar,” said Tetyana, a woman walking past with her five-year-old daughter and 67-year-old mother.

The centre burned for several days with no firefighters to extinguish the flames.

“There are no more local authorities, no police, no doctors, no pharmacy. Everyone has left. We’ve been abandoned,” Tetyana said.

– ‘I can’t leave them’ –

Like an apparition, an elegant woman with short white hair walks along a deserted street with five cats.

Smiling but frightened, Lyudmyla explained that her husband is disabled and cannot move.

“And then there are the abandoned cats. I can’t leave them,” said the former schoolteacher, heading towards one of the few food shops left open.

The shop is supplied by volunteers who come twice a week, braving shelling and missile strikes.

Under the shop, in the basement, is a large ironmonger which has become a relatively safe meeting place for the town’s inhabitants.

Residents come to buy gas canisters, nails, crockery and bed linen. It is one of the few places left where neighbours can interact.

Yury, the 59-year-old shopkeeper, who has a long grey ponytail and wears a baseball cap and overalls, leans on his walking stick behind the counter.

Despite everything, his eyes still sparkle.

“If I let myself get depressed, it’s not good for my old bones,” he said.

But his gaze darkens when he talks about his two grandchildren aged eight and 12 who still live in Soledar.

What do they do with their days? “They create stress,” sighed the grandfather.

He said he keeps them busy by building a heating unit with zinc plates “to prepare for winter”.

– ‘We are not separatists!’ –

Like in all the towns on east Ukraine’s front line, those who stay cannot or do not want to evacuate.

“We just want to stay where we live. We are not separatists! Write this down — we are not separatists!” Larysa, a former bank employee, leaning out from her balcony.

Regional authorities regularly urge people to evacuate and those that remain are often considered as harbouring pro-Moscow views and awaiting the arrival of Russian troops.

Sitting in front of her home, Liya Cherkashyna, 84, does not care about either side — she just wants someone to fill five bottles of water for her from the town’s one working pump.

Yesterday, someone promised to bring her water in exchange for a bottle of vodka which she does not have.

From her balcony, Larysa said: “We just want peace. And silence”.

Japan on Tuesday executed a man convicted of killing seven people in a truck ramming and stabbing rampage in Tokyo’s popular Akihabara electronics district in 2008, the justice ministry said.

Justice Minister Yoshihisa Furukawa said Tomohiro Kato had undertaken “meticulous preparation” for the attack and displayed a “strong intent to kill”.

Furukawa said he “approved the execution after extremely thorough scrutiny,” noting that Kato’s death sentence had been upheld by the court system.

Kato went on the rampage on June 8, 2008, telling police: “I came to Akihabara to kill people. It didn’t matter who I’d kill.”

He was arrested on the spot shortly after the attacks, in which he rammed a rented two-tonne truck into a crowd of pedestrians before getting out and randomly stabbing people.

“This is a very painful case that led to extremely grave consequences and shocked society,” Furukawa said Tuesday.

Police said Kato documented his deadly journey to Akihabara on Internet bulletin boards, typing messages on a mobile phone from behind the wheel of the truck and complaining of his unstable job and his loneliness.

Prosecutors said his self-confidence plummeted after a woman he chatted with online abruptly stopped emailing him when he sent her a photograph of himself.

His anger against the general public grew when his comments on an Internet bulletin board, including his plans to go on a killing spree, were met with no reaction at all, prosecutors said.

While awaiting trial, Kato wrote to a 56-year-old taxi driver whom he injured in the stabbing spree, expressing his remorse.

The victims “were enjoying their lives, and they had dreams, bright futures, warm families, lovers, friends and colleagues,” Kato wrote according to a copy published in the Shukan Asahi weekly.

And in court, he offered remorse for the attack.

“Please let me use this occasion to apologise,” he said about the bloody rampage that also left 10 people injured.

– Support for death penalty –

After the 2008 rampage, Japan banned possession of double-edged knives with blades longer than 5.5 centimetres (about two inches), punishable by up to three years in prison or a 500,000 yen fine.

The attack was Japan’s worst mass killing in seven years and Kato was sentenced to death in 2011, a decision that was upheld by Japan’s top court in 2015.

Kato’s execution is the first in Japan this year and comes after three prisoners were hanged in December 2021. Those executions ended a two-year hiatus and were the first under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s administration.

Japan is one of the few developed countries to retain the death penalty, and public support for capital punishment remains high despite international criticism.

Executions are carried out by hanging, generally long after sentencing. More than 100 people are currently on death row in Japan.

International advocacy groups have denounced the Japanese system, under which death row inmates can wait for their executions for many years in solitary confinement and are only told of their impending death a few hours ahead of time.

But Furukawa defended the death penalty on Tuesday.

The government believes it is “not appropriate” to abolish capital punishment, given “heinous crimes such as mass killings and robbery-murders still repeatedly occur”, he told reporters. 

Junichi Kuwabara, a 54-year-old Tokyo resident, told AFP he was thinking of “how the families of the victims must be feeling.”

“I think it would have been better if it had been done earlier,” he said.

And while he expressed discomfort with the idea of the death penalty, he said “if it can bring justice to relatives of the victims, I think it’s good.”

Tuesday’s execution comes on the anniversary of another major stabbing attack — the 2016 Sagamihara rampage at a disabled care facility, in which 19 people were killed.

Japan also carried out the executions of six members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult responsible for the 1995 sarin attack and other crimes on July 26, 2018.

Firefighters were battling California’s largest wildfire of the summer on Monday, a blaze near famed Yosemite National Park that has forced thousands of people to evacuate, officials said.

The Oak Fire in central California broke out on Friday and is raging while parts of the United States swelter through a heat wave, including the usually cool Pacific Northwest.

The fire in Mariposa County has engulfed 17,241 acres (6,977 hectares) and is 16 percent contained, Cal Fire, the state fire department, said.

“Fire crews are working aggressively using bulldozers, hand crews and aircraft,” with only “minimal growth on the fire” seen on Monday, the department said.

It is the most destructive blaze so far this fire season, according to Cal Fire, destroying more than three times the acreage of the nearby Washburn Fire, which has been nearly 90 percent contained.

But it remains much smaller than last year’s Dixie Fire, which burned nearly one million acres.

Jon Heggie, a Cal Fire battalion chief, told CNN the latest wildfire was “very indicative” of other blazes seen in the region over the last two years.

“These fires are burning with just such a velocity and intensity, it makes it extremely challenging and extremely dangerous for both the public and the firefighters,” Heggie said.

“It’s moving so quickly it’s not giving people a lot of time, and they sometimes are just going to have to evacuate with just the shirts on their back.”

One such couple, Jane and Wes Smith, lost their home and everything in it to the inferno, CNN reported.

“It’s pretty sad to see the house that I grew up in and was raised in gone,” their son Nick Smith told the broadcaster. “It hits hard.”

Cal Fire said 55 residential, commercial and other structures had been destroyed.

– ‘Direct result’ of climate change –

Jonathan Pierce, a spokesman for the fire department, said low humidity and high temperatures were stoking the blaze, worsened by the high number of dead trees and steep slopes in the area.

The Oak Fire has forced the evacuation of around 3,000 people so far, officials said.

Nearly 3,000 firefighters backed by 24 helicopters have been deployed near the southwestern edge of Yosemite National Park.

In recent years, California and other parts of the western United States have been ravaged by huge and fast-moving wildfires, driven by years of drought and a warming climate.

“What I can tell you is this is a direct result of what is climate change,” Heggie told CNN.

“You can’t have a 10-year drought in California and expect things to be the same,” he said. “That drought is what drives what we are calling megafires.”

Extreme temperatures could be seen elsewhere in the country, as 60 million Americans were under a heat advisory on Monday.

The National Weather Service said heat advisories were in place in the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley, while stifling temperatures would ease on Tuesday in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.

The usually cool Pacific Northwest will see temperatures surpassing 100 or more degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) in the Columbia River Gorge and Basin.

The NWS said daily record highs will likely be broken from northern California to the Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington areas on Tuesday.

Cities have opened cooling stations and increased outreach to at-risk communities such as the homeless and those without air conditioning.

The world has been hit by extreme heat waves in recent months, including Western Europe in July and India in March and April — incidents that scientists say are an unmistakable sign of a warming climate.

The extreme weather prompted former US vice president Al Gore, a long-time climate advocate, to issue a stark warning on Sunday about “inaction” by US lawmakers.

Asked whether he believes US President Joe Biden should declare a climate emergency, which would grant him additional policy powers, Gore was blunt.

“Mother Nature has already declared it a global emergency,” Gore told ABC.