Burma/Myanmar: Murder of a leading Muslim constitutional law expert

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) emphasizes that yesterday’s murder of a leading Muslim lawyer and constitutional law expert in Burma (Myanmar) is to be seen as a serious setback for efforts towards more religious tolerance. “The exact motives behind his violent death are not yet known, but the fact that this important advocate of the religious minorities was murdered is a decisive turning point for the country,” explained Ulrich Delius, the STP’s Asia-expert, in Göttingen on Monday. The victim, Ko Ni, was a vehement critic of the controversial religious and racial laws, which serve as a basis to restrict the rights of the religious minorities in the predominantly Buddhist country. Ko Ni, who had also counselled Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD party in legal matters, had made enemies when he founded the ‘Myanmar Muslim Lawyers Association’ in June 2016, in order to advocate for the rights of the oppressed Muslim people more effectively.”

“There must be immediate and comprehensive investigations into the murder, as it could have a serious impact on the democratization process in Burma,” Delius explained. “If there is a political background to the assassination, Burma might be facing even more instability and religious tensions.” However, the country is shocked by the murder anyway, as politically motivated crimes were quite rare so far.

The lawyer died from a shot to head at the airport of Yangon on Sunday evening, when he returned from an official visit to Indonesia together with a government delegation. His grandson – who had come to pick him up at the airport and whom he had been carrying in his arms – was not injured, but a cab driver who had tried to follow the attacker got killed as well. Apparently, the police managed to arrest the attacker, a 53-year-old man from Mandalay.

Ko Ni had been criticized harshly by several lawyers from Mandalay in June 2016, after he had founded the ‘Myanmar Muslim Lawyers Association’ together with 70 other lawyers. Several Buddhist lawyers had even sent a petition to the Ministry of the Interior, demanding the Muslim Lawyer’s Union to be banned. However, the Ministry of the Interior had decided against a ban. The Muslim jurists had tried to take legal action against the discrimination of Muslims in Burma. “Now that Ko Ni was murdered, their most prominent voice has been silenced. This is a bad portent for the struggle against religious intolerance in Burma,” Delius stated.

Header Photo: Kaj17 via Flickr