S.E. Asian Hunger Game Activists rather die than get arrest including young mom

[theking]

Myanmar: The woman who jumped to her death while fleeing police

Even after six months of horrifying news from Myanmar, it is an incident that's shocked the country - five people who chose to jump from a building they were hiding in, some to their deaths, rather than face arrest.

The police have condemned the group as terrorists, but the husband of one victim tells the BBC she was a compassionate wife and mother who felt she was working to alleviate the people's suffering.

This is the tale of her untimely death.

It was on Tuesday afternoon that eight young activists found themselves trapped by a police raid.

The military had seized power months earlier in February, throwing the country into turmoil as millions protested against the coup.

At least 900 people have been killed by the military's violent response, and thousands more arrested.

Wai Wai Myint was one of those caught up in the movement opposing the military junta.

She was one of the five who jumped off a commercial building in downtown Yangon as the police charged in, falling onto a concrete pavement. She and at least one other person died at the scene.

The other three have been taken to a military-run hospital.

In the first photograph of Wai Wai Myint that began circulating on social media after news of her death, she stands ramrod straight, looking defiantly at the camera. Her fingers are raised in the three-finger Hunger Games salute that has become the trademark gesture used by young dissidents in South East Asia. The military authorities have described the group she was with as terrorists who were planning to plant bombs.



They have published confessions by two of the activists who did not jump and were arrested there, and photographs of what they say were ingredients for explosives.

But that is not the image painted by her husband, Soe Myat Thu.

He had to say goodbye to Apple, as he calls her, at a military-organised mass cremation for her and four other people, including the young man who died with her when they jumped.