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Nyan Win, the spokesman for Myanmar’s ousted National League for Democracy (NLD), died Tuesday after contracting COVID-19 in prison, prompting condemnation from observers who said the military had killed the veteran politician by detaining him during the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
Reports of Nyan Win’s death came as junta troops torched the homes of NLD supporters fleeing a military offensive against People’s Defense Force (PDF) militiamen in northwestern Myanmar’s war-torn Sagaing region that has killed more than a dozen people in recent days, including five civilians.
Nyan Win, a member of the NLD’s Central Executive Committee and longtime confidante of former State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, died early Tuesday morning at the General Hospital in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon as the result of complications from COVID-19, his lawyer San Mar La Nyunt told RFA’s Myanmar Service.