Friends, family members and dozens of leaders from Myanmar’s LGBTQ community were among the hundreds who yesterday attended the funeral of Kyaw Zin Win, the librarian whose suicide in the wake of bullying by colleagues has provoked a national conversation about workplace harassment and LGBTQ rights.
With the chants of Buddhist monks echoing, Win’s body was slowly wheeled from his home in Thaketa township to Yangon’s Yayway cemetery. Carried on both sides by family members, and flanked by LGBT rights activists dressed in black, mourners draped a rainbow flag over his casket to honor his memory.
Behind them, Win’s grandmother, a frail woman who had been his sole caretaker, slowly brought up the rear of the procession.
The steady tears that had accompanied the 10-minute journey rose into a wail as the casket was opened at the pagoda’s crematorium to reveal a pale-faced 26 year old, clad in a traditional Burmese longyi and surrounded by roses. A single wreath lay on his chest.
Win moved to Yangon when he was just 2 years old, shortly after both his parents passed away. Since then, he’d lived with his aunt and grandmother, the latter of whom became his primary care giver after his aunt moved to Singapore for work.
“He is and always was a quiet child,” U Aye Lwin, Win’s neighbor, told Coconuts Yangon at the funeral. “He loved his grandmother very much and would always talk to her every morning when he wakes up and at night before he sleeps. He was a hard-worker, good at school and good at his job.”
Lwin saw Win just hours before Win took his life. They had watched TV together the night before, a weekly occurrence when they would chat with each other.
“He didn’t have too many friends and would stay home with his grandmother if he wasn’t working or studying. They were very close,” he said.
Friends may have been hard to come by at Myanmar Imperial University, where Win, in a Facebook post made before his death, said he had been pressured by faculty members into revealing his sexual orientation, then relentlessly mocked for it.
His death on Sunday has since sparked a growing conversation online, and drawn calls for action from the LGBTQ community, which yesterday condemned the young librarian’s death as a “human rights violation” and demanded the university take proactive steps to prevent cases like this from occurring in the future.
MIU, for its part, has issued more than one apology, and on Tuesday, announced that three faculty members identified as participants in the bullying had been placed on leave pending an investigation.
But with a national spotlight burning hot, the incident has moved beyond the realm of university disciplinary hearings. The Myanmar National Human Rights Commission revealed to RFA Burmese yesterday that they were now investigating the case, and planned to question students, friends and family on their own.
Whatever the outcome, average Myanmar citizens are watching.
“It’s such a shame that this young man thought there was no support for him,” a taxi driver told us as we made our way to the funeral. “If people could learn to listen to each other and empathize, we can more readily accept and embrace each other.”
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please reach out. A range of free counseling services provided by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Yangon can be reached at 09509440408003, 09401638420, 09421181246, or 09253258821. The emergency crisis hotline at Pan Hlaing Siloam Hospital can be reached at 09452625100. The hotline at Parami Hospital can be reached at 01657930 or at 09977870369.
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