Myanmar poet Khat Thi, whose works declare resistance to the ruling junta, died in detention and his body was returned with the organs removed, his family says.
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A spokesman for the junta did not answer calls to request comment on the death of Khat Thi, who had penned the line: "They shoot in the head, but they don't know the revolution is in the heart." Myanmar Now news service said he was 44.
Khat Thi's wife said on Sunday both of them were taken for interrogation on Saturday by armed soldiers and police in the central town of Shwebo, in the Sagaing region - a centre of resistance to the coup in which elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted.
"I was interrogated. So was he. They said he was at the interrogation centre. But he didn't come back, only his body," his wife Chaw Su told BBC Burmese language news in tears from Monywa, about 100 km away by road.
"They called me in the morning and told me to meet him at the hospital in Monywa. I thought it was just for a broken arm or something... But when I arrived here, he was at the morgue and his internal organs were taken out," she said.
She had been told at the hospital he had a heart problem, but had not bothered to read the death certificate because she was sure it would not be true, Chaw Su said. Reuters was unable to reach the hospital for comment.
Chaw Su said the army had planned to bury him but that she pleaded with them for the body. She did not say how she knew her husband's organs had been removed.
Khat Thi was at least the third poet to die during protests since the February 1 coup. Security forces have killed at least 776 civilians, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group.
Australian Associated Press
