Arakan Front Party leaders go missing in Kyaukphyu Twsp

By DMG 06 Oct 2022

DMG Newsroom
6 October 2022, Kyaukphyu 

Two senior members of the Arakan Front Party (AFP) went missing on Tuesday evening, according to family members. 

U Kyaw Lwin, an advisor to the party, and U Maung Kaung, 70, who is on the party’s central executive committee, went missing after they had departed for the former’s farmhouse in Kone Bwe Village, Kyaukphyu Township. 

A family member of U Kyaw Lwin said: “U Maung Kaung came to our house at around 8 p.m. But their phones were turned off when we phoned them around 8 p.m. We went to the village, and they were not there.” 

U Kyaw Lwin often stays at his farmhouse, where he grows vegetables and breeds ducks, according to his family. 

Family members assume that the duo were abducted because they had criticised the recent, unsolved murder of the head of the Maungdaw District Education Department. 

A family member of U Kyaw Lwin said: “We think he was detained because of his Facebook post about the murder. We found no other reason except that.” 

The head of the  Maungdaw District Education Department, Daw Myint Myint San, was stabbed multiple times at around 6 p.m. on October 2 in the compound of her office in Maungdaw Township. She died while being taken to the township hospital. 

In the wake of the killing, a post from U Kyaw Lwin’s Facebook account read: “I never support targeting monks, health [care workers], and education staff. Or [was Daw Myint Myint San murdered] because of personal grudge? It is, however, unlikely. She is a Bamar ethnic teacher. I hope that she was killed not because of racial hatred.” 

AFP chairman Dr. Aye Maung called for the immediate release of the two. “I would like to ask the responsible organisation to release them,” he said. 

U Kyaw Lwin, 56, is a former Arakan National Party (ANP) lawmaker representing Kyaukphyu Township in the Arakan State Parliament, from 2015 to 2020. He subsequently resigned from the ANP and served as vice chair of the AFP, established by Dr. Aye Maung.