Burmese poet dies under torture after junta arrest

Demonstration in the streets of Rangoon, 3 months after the coup d'état of the military junta, on May 6, 2021. AP

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Several thousand people paid tribute on Monday in Monywa to the Burmese poet Khet Thi, who died after being arrested this weekend by the police.

According to his wife, the poet would have died in hospital as a result of the torture inflicted during the interrogation.

The poet's remains were returned to the family with missing organs. 

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They shoot in the head, but they do not know that the Revolution is in the heart 

", " 

even if my opinion is different from yours, I am ready to give my life for all of you

 ".

For Khet Thi, writing was an act of resistance, of defiance against an increasingly violent junta.

On Saturday, the 40-year-old and his wife were arrested in the central town of Shwebo and taken for questioning.

The wife is quickly released.

The next day the police told her that her husband was in Monywa hospital further south.

Chaw Su expected to see her husband injured, but not dead.

In

a chilling BBC story

in Burmese, she explained that she found her husband in the morgue and that internal organs were taken from his body.

The AAPP, a local NGO which records the abuses committed by the security forces, confirmed that the poet had died as a result of torture inflicted at the interrogation center, bringing the number of people killed since the coup d'etat to 780. almost 100 days ago.

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