Myanmar: train driver-turned-pro-democracy defender dies as result of beatings
Event- Country
- Myanmar
- Initial Date
- Sep 9, 2021
- Event Description
On an August morning at a wet market in Mandalay’s industrial suburbs, a 50-year-old man was selling noodles and cheerfully greeting fellow vendors and customers alike.
Win Ko Oo was well-known for his friendliness. But not everyone who had grown familiar with his smiling face knew that he had once had a very different life.
When the year began, Win Ko Oo was a train driver with 25 years’ experience. But then the army seized power, and everything changed. As someone who had lived through the aftermath of a similar coup in 1988, he knew he had to resist the return of military rule.
A month after Myanmar’s elected civilian government was overthrown, Win Ko Oo made up his mind to join the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) that was sweeping the country.
“I hesitated at first because I had to think about my family. We had nowhere else to go. But in the end, my hatred for the regime outweighed my concerns about the hardships we would have to face, so I quit,” he told Myanmar Now that August morning.
Mandalay’s railway workers were among the first to join the movement in large numbers. In the department that Win Ko Oo belonged to, 285 of 319 staff members walked off the job in an effort to deny the regime control over state mechanisms.
This resulted in hundreds of railway employees and their families being forced to leave the housing compound where most of the striking workers lived.
But as one of the leaders of the protesting workers, Win Ko Oo also had another reason to worry: a warrant for his arrest on charges of incitement.
- Impact of Event
- 1
- Gender of HRD
- Man
- Violation
- Death
- Violence (physical)
- Wounds and Injuries
- Rights Concerned
- Offline
- Right to healthy and safe environment
- Right to life
- HRD
- Pro-democracy defender
- Perpetrator-State
- Unknown
- Perpetrator-Non-State
- Unknown
- Source
- Monitoring Status
- Pending
- Event Location
Latitude: 21.979862784351127
Longitude: 96.08529858442515
- Event Location
- Summary for Publications
On 9 September 2021, Win Ko Oo, pro-democracy defender, was beaten by unidentified individuals leading to his death 10 days after, likely as result of his engagement in the anti-coup activities in Mandalay, Myanmar.