(Photo : Photo by Stringer/Getty Images)
YANGON, MYANMAR - APRIL 03: Anti-coup protesters hold improvised weapons during a protest in Yangon on April 03, 2021 in Yangon, Myanmar. Myanmar's military Junta continued a brutal crackdown on a nationwide civil disobedience movement in which thousands of people have turned out in continued defiance of live ammunition. Local media and monitoring organizations estimate that over 500 people have been killed since the coup began.
A Myanmar poet, Khet Thi, died in detention, and his family said his body was returned with missing organs, Reuters reports.
Armed soldiers and police arrested and detained both Khet Thi and his wife, Chaw Su, on Saturday in the central town of Shwebo, in the Sagaing area.
Sagaing is a hotbed of resistance to the coup that deposed elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi - for questioning, according to Khet Thi's wife.
Thi never returned home, even though Su did. On Sunday, his body was returned to his family.
The junta's spokesman did not respond to calls seeking comment on Khet Thi's death, who wrote the line "They shoot in the head, but they don't know the revolution is in the heart."
Su shared to BBC Burmese language news in a report by the Insider, "They called me in the morning and told me to meet him at the hospital in Monywa. I thought it was just for a broken arm or something ... But when I arrived here, he was at the morgue, and his internal organs were taken out."
They were taken in the Sagaing region's central town of Shwebo. Protests against a military coup that deposed Aung San Suu Kyi erupted in the area in February.
According to Reuters, Su was told at the hospital that his husband died of a heart attack. However, she didn't bother reading the death certificate because she knew it wasn't real, Chaw Su said.
According to Chaw Su, the army had intended to bury him, but she pleaded with them to keep him alive. Su didn't mention how she found out her husband's organs were missing.
Read Also: Myanmar Post-Coup Protests Records Over 700 Fatalities
Poets are Dying Since February Coup
Since the February 1 coup, Khet Thi was at least the third poet to die in protests. Khet Thi was a classmate of K Za Win, a poet killed in Monywa during a protest in early March.
Thi worked as an engineer before leaving in 2012 to pursue his passion for poetry and support himself by making and selling ice cream and cakes.
He wrote two weeks after the coup, "I don't want to be a hero, I don't want to be a martyr, I don't want to be a weakling, I don't want to be a fool," Thi adds, "I don't want to support injustice. If I have only a minute to live, I want my conscience to be clean for that minute."
"My people are being shot, and I can only throw back poems," he wrote. "But when you are sure your voice is not enough, then you need to choose a gun carefully. I will shoot."
According to the advocacy organization Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, Thi "died at the hospital after being tortured in the detention center."
This is the third poet to perish during the coup protests.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reported that 780 civilians had been killed and 4,899 detained since the coup began.
Despite the killings and thousands of arrests, cultural leaders and celebrities have been vocal supporters of the coup. Protests are held daily in various parts of the Southeast Asian nation.
Related Article: Death of Detained Myanmar Official Raises Fear
