The military council in Myanmar returned the body of prominent poet Khet Ti, who died in a hospital after being detained in a prison, according to his family. A spokesperson for the military council did not respond to calls seeking comments on the death of Khet Ti at the age of 45, who had posted on his Facebook page before his arrest, "They shoot in the head, but they do not know that the revolution is in the heart."
Khet Ti's wife, Chaw Su, stated that armed soldiers and police took him for questioning on Saturday in the town of Shwebo in the Sagaing region—the center of resistance against the coup that ousted elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She continued, "They called me in the morning and asked me to meet him in the hospital in Monywa. I thought the reason was a broken arm or something like that... But when I got there, he was in the morgue and his internal organs had been removed," adding with a tone of sorrow, "He did not return home... only his body came back."
She noted that she was informed in the hospital that her husband had died from a heart problem, but she did not bother to read the death certificate because she was sure it would not be accurate, according to her. Chaw Su explained that the army planned to bury him, but she pleaded for the return of the body home without clarifying how she learned that her husband's internal organs had been removed.
Khet Ti was an engineer before leaving his job in 2012 to focus on his poetry and relied on supporting his family by making and selling ice cream. He wrote a week after the coup, "I do not want to be a hero, I do not want to be a martyr, I do not want to be weak, I do not want to be foolish... I do not want to support injustice, and if I have only one minute to live, I would like to spend it with my conscience at peace."
Recently, he wrote that he was a guitarist, a baker, and a poet, not someone who could shoot a gun. However, he hinted that his stance was changing, as he later wrote, "They shoot my people and I can only compose poems... But when you are sure that your voice is not enough, you need to carry the gun... I will shoot."
Khet Ti is the third poet at least to die during the popular protests that have swept Myanmar since the military coup on February 1. Poet Kyi Zay Win, 39, was shot during a demonstration in Monywa in early March. Cultural figures and celebrities who are prominent supporters of the anti-coup movement have continued daily protests across the Southeast Asian nation despite killings and the detention of thousands. An activist group involved in the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners estimated the number of civilian fatalities since the coup at 780, indicating that Khet Ti had "died in the hospital after being tortured in the interrogation center" without specifying the source of this information.
