Video clips and pictures of the funeral in Rangoon on Sunday of Thet Naing Oo have sent shock waves through anti-regime communities of Burmese living overseas. It was not so much the fact that the former democracy activist had died, but the way he was killed.

The body of the 40-year-old Thet Naing Oo was seen to have been mutilated, with serious head injuries.

On March 17, the activist—a former member of the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front—was involved in a quarrel in Rangoon’s Kyeemyindine Township. Witnesses said he had a heated argument with municipal officers and members of the local fire brigade.

The witnesses say Thet Naing Oo was handcuffed and badly beaten to death by government officials in public. Police had reportedly filed a case against the activist and two of his friends—Win Myint and Khin Maung Zaw, the two winesses—under Act 333, for allegedly obstructing government officials in their duty.

Thet Naing Oo died in hospital the following day.

The way in which he died prompted US State Department to issue a statement on Tuesday saying the incident was “the latest in a string of increasingly violent acts, targeting members of the political opposition that highlight the brutality and repressiveness of the Burmese regime.”

The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission has also condemned the assault as “raw brutality.” AHRC’s open letter to Burmese Home Affairs Minister Maj-Gen Maung Oo claimed that even the lowest-ranking government officials in Burma “seem to enjoy absolute impunity to commit any type of offence against the citizen, without any prospects for complaint or redress.”

Thet Naing Oo died in similar circumstances to two other opposition figures in May 2005. Aung Hlaing Win, an opposition politician, died in a detention centre in Rangoon during interrogation. His body was hurriedly cremated by intelligence officers, before his family was notified. Later that month, activist Min Tun Wai died mysteriously in Moulmein jail, Mon State, after one day’s detention.

Some activists in Rangoon say that physical abuses, threats, intimidation and violence by government agents against activists have significantly increased since opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was again put under house detention following an incident in central Burma when her convoy was attacked by pro-regime thugs.

The attack, they say, has sent a signal to police and other government officials that it is okay to attack democracy activists, despite the junta’s claim that it maintains strict law and order.

So far there has been no investigation into Thet Naing Oo’s death, so where’s the law and order? We think it is important to bring officers who are involved in brutality to justice, and to launch impartial findings of apparent first-degree murder committed by authorities.

Then we can talk about law and order.