Kyaw Zaw

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Burmese
Other namesThakin Shwe
Known forMember of the Thirty Comrades
SpouseThan Sein
ChildrenHla Kyaw Zaw
San Kyaw Zaw
Aung Kyaw Zaw
Kyaw Zaw Oo (deceased)
Tun Aye Kyaw Zaw (deceased)
AwardsIndependence Mawgunwin (First Class)
Thray Sithu
In this
Burmese name, the given name
is Kyaw Zaw. There is no family name.

Kyaw Zaw (

Yunnan Province, China
, since 1989 after retiring from politics.

Student activist

Born

Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association) who made him become politically aware and soon joined the Yè tat (The Braves - Dobama militia). As he was educated only in the vernacular and had no knowledge of the English language required for university, he went on to the Highergrade Teachers Training School where English was not required.[1]

The Great

Rangoon University at the head of the procession beating them with their batons and killing one of their number called Aung Kyaw.[2] Kyaw Zaw saw this and was himself slightly injured trampled by a horse.[1]

Freedom fighter

When the strike came to an end, a disappointed Kyaw Zaw joined the Dobama Asiayone and became Thakin Shwe before he returned to Thonze to become a schoolteacher but still active in the political struggle for independence and involved in organising and training the local

nom de guerre Bo Kyaw Zaw (Commander Fame).[1]

Army career

After Burma gained independence in 1948, Kyaw Zaw became famous as the commander who fought and defeated the

Karen State.[3] The Prime Minister at the time was U Nu and the Commander in Chief of the Army General Ne Win. Kyaw Zaw was wounded by a shrapnel in his thigh in 1949 during the Battle of Insein when the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO) laid siege to the capital Rangoon. He was commissioned by Ne Win during the crisis as the commanding officer and Zaw rated this battle as the bitterest with the greatest loss of life in his military career.[1]

Brig. Gen. Kyaw Zaw was forced to retire from the Army in April 1957 when papers recovered from raids of the Burmese Communist rebel strongholds located in central Burma indicated that Kyaw Zaw might have contacted and informed the Communists of the Army's movements. A Commission established to investigate "In Re the matter of Brig.Gen.Kyaw Zaw" (in Burmese Bohmu Gyoke Kyaw Zaw Keik-sa) found that a preponderance of the evidence showed that Brig.Gen. Zaw's role was suspect and recommended his discharge from the Army. He had joined the Communist Party in 1944 and was elected to the Central Committee the following year.[4] He had however decided not to join the Army rebellion led by Communist commanders soon after independence in 1948; he was convalescing from tuberculosis.[1]

Civilian interlude

After his discharge from the Army, Kyaw Zaw contested as an independent candidate for

cease-fire and an armistice
agreement, broke down in June 1963, and the representatives of these rebel groups were allowed a safe passage back to their jungle strongholds.

Though Kyaw Zaw was not arrested after the breakdown of the peace talks, in June 1963 dozens of Burmese politicians and writers who were suspected of having "Communist sympathies" were arrested and jailed without any charge or trial by the RC for several years. Among the detainees in the immediate aftermath of the failed peace parley were Aung Than, older brother of Aung San and a leader of the above-ground political party National United Front (NUF), and the writer Dagon Taya (real name U Htay Myaing, b. 9 May 1919).

Communist leader

In late July 1976, the

Indochina
(i.e the Communist victories in Kampuchea, Vietnam and Laos in April and December 1975)" he requested the Army personnel not to be hesitant to "join the armed revolution led by the Communist Party of Burma".

Very few, if any, Burmese military personnel of any import heeded the call of Kyaw Zaw to join forces with the CPB. Instead, mainly due to internal rebellions by the

Wa and Kokang ethnic groups which constituted the CPB's "People's Army", the CPB virtually collapsed in 1989. Even though the CPB now had a web site (CPB [1]
)and occasionally issues announcements regarding the political situation in Burma, it is now a pale shadow of its former self when it used to have, under its command, an Army or armed resistance groups in the thousands if not in the tens of thousands.

In May 1980 Ne Win's Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) government announced an Amnesty, and even though many exiled opponents of Ne Win's regime such as former Prime Minister U Nu and Bo Yan Naing, another famous member of the Thirty Comrades, returned to Burma under the Amnesty, Kyaw Zaw did not. In a speech given to the Burma War Veterans Association on July 29, 1982 Ne Win briefly "reminisced" about the Thirty Comrades days and made a brief reference to "Bo Kyaw Zaw- the one that left or ran away". ( A translation of Ne Win's speech can be read in the July 30, 1982 issues of the Rangoon Guardian and the Working People's Daily)

During the

Rangoon and Mandalay and infiltrating the student unions.[3]

Unfinished business

Kyaw Zaw, after nearly ten years in exile in 1998, now aged 78, called for a meaningful political dialogue between the ruling junta — the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) — and Burmese opposition groups, including the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi.[5] He believed the Burmese people's struggle for a government they deserved had not finished yet and that they would have to "struggle for themselves courageously, ceaselessly and collectively".[4] The military regime's move to Pyinmana as the capital of the country, he commented, indicated not so much the fear of invasion by the United States as the fear of another popular uprising in future.[6]

Kyaw Zaw was then only one of two surviving Thirty Comrades. The Thirty Comrades were a group of Burmese men who secretly left Burma in 1941, and were trained by the Japanese on

Hainan Island and returned to Burma with the invading Japanese Army in early to mid-1942. In a house in Bangkok on December 26, 1941, most of the Thirty Comrades had their blood drawn (in syringes) and poured into a silver bowl from which each of them drank (thway thauk in time-honoured tradition) and pledged "eternal loyalty" to each other and to the cause of Burmese independence.[7] Among the Thirty Comrades were Thakin Aung San who took the nom de guerre Bo Tayza, Thakin Shu Maung who became Bo Ne Win and Thakin Shwe who became Bo Kyaw Zaw. Kyaw Zaw was one of the youngest of the Thirty Comrades. The sole surviving member of the Thirty Comrades today is Bo Yè Htut who is believed to be living in Pyinmana. Bo Ye Htut, like Bo Zeya (killed in action in 1968) and Bo Yan Aung (killed in the CPB purge of 1967), was one of the Communist members of the Thirty Comrades who led the Army rebellion in 1948 when Bo Kyaw Zaw decided to remain in the Army.[3] Kyaw Zaw had also stated that he always believed the British were behind the assassination of Aung San one way or another.[4]

The memoirs of Kyaw Zaw written in Burmese can be accessed at the CPB web site.[1] It was published outside Burma in 2007 titled "From Hsaisu to Menghai".[8] He was regarded by some as one of only three military leaders in Burma's history that enjoyed the status of teacher in the heart of ordinary soldiers; the other two were Aung San and Tin Oo.[9]

Death

Kyaw Zaw died on 10 October 2012 at a hospital in

Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Bogyoke Kyaw Zaw's autobiography in Burmese". CPB. Archived from the original on 2005-09-29.
  2. ^ "The Statement on the Commemoration of Bo Aung Kyaw's Death". All Burma Students League. December 1999. Retrieved 2006-10-16.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Smith, Martin (1991). Burma - Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. London and New Jersey: Zed Books. pp. 154, 211, 150, 305–306, 368, 366, 92.
  4. ^ a b c "Unfinished Struggle: An Interview with Gen.Kyaw Zaw". The Irrawaddy. Dec 2003. Archived from the original on 2011-04-30. Retrieved 2007-09-04.
  5. ^ "Comrades Appeal to Ne Win". The Irrawaddy. February 1998. Archived from the original on 2011-04-30. Retrieved 2006-08-27.
  6. ^ "Pyinmana:The Threat from Within". The Irrawaddy. Nov 2005. Archived from the original on 2010-01-15. Retrieved 2006-08-28.
  7. ^ "An Enduring Legacy Written in Blood". The Irrawaddy. Mar 2005. Archived from the original on 2011-04-30. Retrieved 2006-08-26.
  8. ^ Ko Ko Thet (February 2008). "Red Star on a Stormy Journey". The Irrawaddy. Archived from the original on 14 August 2011. Retrieved 13 October 2012.
  9. ^ Tin Maung Than (15 December 2004). "Reconciliation - 'Don't Let's Lose Hope'". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 13 October 2012.
  10. ^ Yan Pai; Nyein Nyein (10 October 2010). "Exiled Comrade Dies". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  11. ^ Yan Pai (6 September 2012). "'Thirty Comrades' Survivor's Shwedagon Wish". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 13 October 2012.

External links


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