Ko Htet Myat Aung
Ko Htet Myat Aung is a human rights defender and students’ rights leader from Mandalay, Myanmar. He has been a prominent figure in Myanmar’s non-violent, pro-democracy movement. The defender became involved in the students’ rights movement in 2018 when he joined Yadanabon University Students’ Union. In 2020, he became became General Secretary of the Students’ Union, and from 2021 to 2023, he served as its President, including during the military coup.
Since the coup, he has been actively involved in leading peaceful protests and resistance in Mandalay, as part of the pro-democracy movement. In early 2024, he helped to revive large-scale urban movements, focused on defending civil and political rights, and securing democratic freedoms. As a result of his role in the peaceful resistance, Ko Htet Myat Aung has been subjected to arrest warrants issued by the military junta. In December 2025, the human rights defender was arrested and detained by the military junta in Mandalay, with reports indicating that he was subjected to severe violence during his arrest and detention.
Human rights defenders in Myanmar are subjected to a range of attacks and abuses. They include serious human rights violations against ethnic minorities; the harassment and imprisonment of human rights defenders for their exercise of civil and political rights; reports of torture, ill-treatment, lack of access to health care and solitary confinement of human rights defenders while they were in detention; extra-judicial killings and violence, discrimination, surveillance, legislative and judicial harassment, all of which continued unabated. HRDs working on civil and political rights, minority rights and economic, social and cultural rights, including land rights, are particularly at risk of being targeted.
