U Ko Ni was returning from Indonesia where he was part of a delegation attending a senior leadership meeting in Jakarta. He was waiting at the taxi station just in front of the airport terminal at around 4:30pm when he was shot in the head from close range and killed immediately.

“It is a very sorrowful thing for Myanmar, and a very big loss for the country, I have to say,” U Win Htein, a member of the NLD’s central executive committee, told The Myanmar Times yesterday.

According to a police report obtained by The Myanmar Times and signed by Police Officer Myo Naing, the suspected shooter is a 53-year-old man from Mandalay. The suspect has been arrested and is being questioned by police. No motive has been identified for the murder.

The 42-year-old taxi driver, U Nay Win, was shot and critically injured while pursuing the shooter. He later died in the hospital, according to his wife. He is also survived by his three children, including a 45-day old baby.

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U Ko Ni was a well-respected lawyer and a patron of the recently formed Myanmar Muslim Lawyers Association. He was an outspoken critic of the “race and religion laws”, a legislative package of four bills supported by hardline nationalists, as well as a champion of religious tolerance.

Activists and rights groups yesterday expressed outrage over the murders and called for the swift delivery of justice.

“His death will send shock waves across the human rights community in the country and beyond, and the authorities must send a clear message that such violence will not be tolerated and will not go unpunished,” Josef Benedict, Amnesty International’s deputy campaigns director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement yesterday evening.

“U Ko Ni was a tireless human rights campaigner, and his death marks the loss of an important voice in the fight for human rights in Myanmar,” he added.