19th July Martyrs Day

19th July Martyrs Day
Azarni day or Martyr’s Day is held on 19th July annually in Burma/Myanmar. It is held to mark the assassination of its founding father and independence leader along with his cabinet on this day in 1947 at 10:37 AM. This year marks the 60th anniversary of this martyrs’ day. Assassinated cabinet members were General Aung San, Mai Pun Saw-Bwar Gyi Sao San Tun, Mann Ba Khaing,Takhin Mya, U Razak, U Ba Win (Elder brother of Aung San), and Dedoke U Ba Cho, Ministry secretary U Ohn Maung and body guard of U Razak, Ye Baw Ko Twe also died at this incident.
They were gunned down by power-mad men and believers of the rule of might. It was an event that has not been forgotten to date. The people are still sorrowing, bleeding and weeping over similar events till this day is ironically perpetrated by the Myanmar Tatmadaw, which is originally supposed to protect the people from all the dangers.
Usually top government officials, foreign diplomats, local dignitaries and families of the eight comrades assassinated along with Aung San laid wreaths in a solemn ceremony. But nowadays, Myanmar/Burma’s annual commemoration is downgraded to be attended by one minister and without his daughter, imprisoned opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Usually sirens are sounded at 10-37AM with a two-minute silence was held throughout the whole country in honour of the nine Martyrs of Burma. This ritual is discarded nowadays and there are very few public activities for example previous practices of flying flags at half mast or sounding are no more practiced nowadays. Present generation of Burmese even don’t know much about the struggles for independence and are even ignorant about General Aung San and thirty comrades’ struggle for our country. What a shame, I was surprised and even had a goose flesh when the wife of the VVIP talk about General Aung San, thirty comrades, Phe Pu Shein, Diarchy system, U Thant, U Nu and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi etc because she notice that we are from Burma. She even show off with famous Burma’s football heroes, Bahar Dur, Aung Khin, Ko Ko Gyi etc.
No wonder in 1990 present Military government shamelessly wrote in the article that Myanmar should not honour ex-UNSG U Thant as he was not a pure Burmese but his father was a Oria Indian. And when one of the most brilliant, intelligent Deputy Education Minister Dr Nyi Nyi was dismissed, the same newspaper wrote that he had Chinese blood and was not fit to hold the high post. They are ridiculing Daw Suu for her marriage to the British Michael Aris. She was called Kalama although that derogatory racial slur is nowadays reserved for all mixed blooded people.
Although Galon U Saw was tried and hanged for the assassination cum massacre there are unconfirmed reports that Ne Win was behind the plot. Ne Win had said to be instigated U Saw by asking the sharp shooter, a famous sniper Yangon Ba Swe to shoot U Saw but not to shoot a direct hit on him but just to miss so that U Saw would suspect that the it was a fail assassination attempt by General Aung San and started a plot to revenge. Ne Win was a master plotter and it worked, U Saw was successfully mislead by that successfully prosecuted “failed assassination” stage show and since then started planning for the revenge attack on General on General Aung San. And Ne Win just sent TWO body guards only for General Aung San and Cabinet on that day and both of them were missing on that fateful day and found death two days later.
There are a lot of first eyewitness evidences that the Burmese army directed and orchestrated the attack in May on the motorcade of the democracy leader Daw Suu. The attack and subsequent detention of Aung San Suu Kyi sparked international outrage and the US Congress has recently imposed sanctions against Burmese exports.
Let’s look back Burma’s independence history step by step.
In 1885 the Third Anglo-Burmese War resulted in the whole country became a province of British India on 1 January 1886. In 1886 the British-owned Burmah Oil Company, BOC was founded, and in 1915 Burma had become the 14th largest oil exporter in the world. It was also the world’s largest exporter of rice.
In 1923 there started a partially elected legislature with limited powers.
However, the economic depression of the early 1930s caused widespread unrest and increased calls for self-rule government.
On 1 April 1937 Burma was separated from India.
Burma became a crown colony under Prime Minister Ba Maw.
Ba Maw was replaced by U Saw in 1939.
‘Thirty Comrades’ under Aung San, who traveled to Taiwan for training by the Japanese.
In December 1941 Aung San formed the Burma Independence Army (BIA).
the Japanese with the help of BIA invaded and occupied Burma in early 1942.
Ba Maw became the head of a Japanese puppet state as a Adi Pati or Supreme leader.
During World War 2 BIA changed to Burma National Army and started a revolution.
A political coalition called the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) was formed to represent nationalist views.
In May 1945 Allied Forces and Burma National Army liberated Burma.
In August the British civilian administration returned to the country.
William Francis Hare, 5th Earl of Listowel GCMG PC (28 September 1906 - 12 March 1997) was a British nobleman and Labour politician. He was educated at Eton College and at Balliol College, Oxford. He served as a Lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps. He was a Labour Member of London County Council for East Lewisham from 1937-1946 and for Battersea North from 1952-1957. He served as Labour Party Whip in House of Lords from 1941-1944. He was Deputy Leader of the House of Lords, 1944-1945 and held ministerial office as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, India Office, Postmaster-General from 1945-1947, Secretary of State for India from April to August 1947, Secretary of State for Burma from 1947-January 1948, Minister of State for Colonial Affairs from 1948-1950; and Joint Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1950-1951. He then served as Governor-General of Ghana from 1957-1960. He was Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords, 1965-1976. He was appointed a Privy Counselor in 1946 and awarded the GCMG in 1957.
The following is Lord Listowel’s account of Aung San’s last years and death:
The Executive Council normally met at Government House, but the agenda did not concern the reserve powers of the Governor on that occasion, so it had met at the Secretariat. This was the case on the morning of Saturday July 19th. At about 10.30am three men armed with Sten guns and in army uniform burst into the Council Chamber, having shot the guard outside the door. They opened fire point blank at the assembled counselors. Aung San stood up as they entered, and received the first volley in the chest. They then fired to his right and left, killing six counselors, and mortally wounding two others. Only three of those present survived. The assassins had also intended to kill U Nu after the attack on the Secretariat, but luckily he was out when they got to his house. There was an immediate danger of a rising organized by U Saw’s supporters and the Communist Party, who spread the rumour that the British were responsible for the murders. The Rangoon Press was already accusing us of complicity in the crime. Calm was restored by Rance’s presence of mind in asking U Nu, who was the President of the Constituent Assembly, to form a new Council of Ministers, which was sworn in the following day. He immediately issued a statement denying the complicity of the British Government or the Governor in the murder plot.
But it soon emerged from the enquiry set on foot by Rance that acts of negligence and even corruption in the Burma army had contributed significantly to the disaster. In June and July there had been two mysterious thefts of arms and equipment from the Army Ordnance Depot.
In each case a bogus police party with forged documents had perpetrated the thefts. It transpired later that two British officers had been in the pay of U Saw. One had forged the police documents, the other had sold the arms to U Saw.
The officer in charge of the Ordnance Depot had revealed in a statement to the Military Police, and reported straight away to the Chief of Staff of the G.O.C., that U Saw in his cups had admitted to him that he was responsible for the arms thefts. Having read the statements of the officer in charge of the Ordnance Depot, this senior officer locked it up in his safe and forgot about it, instead of informing the Burma Police. He did not remember this vital statement until after the assassination.
Rance notes in his Memoirs that after he had read the incriminating statement he said aloud “Good heavens, if we had known of this earlier, the assassination could probably have been prevented.” He informed U Nu immediately, emphasizing secrecy, and U Nu’s reaction also was that the murderers could have been foiled. What is really remarkable is that neither he nor any of his ministerial colleagues exposed the role of British officers in the assassination of their colleagues. As Kynev Nien, a senior Burmese civil servant, reported to Maung Maung, a Burmese politician: “As Nu had said and [the British] had agreed “what had happened had happened, the point is to get Independence quickly without fail and not to provoke the British Authorities into … revoking promises”".
Of course they had an undertaking from Rance that the culprits would be apprehended and brought to justice. If the true story had “leaked” at this moment, and it had reached the press, Europeans would have been as much at risk all over Burma as they were in India during the Mutiny. However this inaction by the British authorities did lead some Burmese to wonder whether the British officers were acting under orders.
I have dwelt at some length on the events of July the 19th, 1947 because they represented a turning point, in the history of Burma. Would the internal strife that marred the early years of Burmese independence have been avoided if Aung San had not been killed at the early age of 32? Could this country with its enormous natural resources, have gradually developed under wise leadership, like another United States of America, bringing peace and plenty to a union of peoples speaking many different languages and professing many different religious faiths? This is how Rance, who knew Burma and its leaders better than any other Englishman, put the question himself, and answered it:
“The question will always be asked - if Aung San and his associates had not been assassinated on that fateful day in July 1947, would Burma’s troubles in 1949 and succeeding years have arisen? In my view, as long as Aung San held the confidence of the Burmans and the Hill Peoples (possibly less the Karens) I don’t believe they would. Aung San was a much stronger character than his successor, U Nu, and with the assistance of Mahn Ba Khaing, a popular Karen leader, the Karen troubles of 1949 may not have escalated to the heights they eventually did.”
Aung San had the qualities of a soldier-statesman, like Washington, and as the founder of independence had become the focus of a nationwide patriotism. He loved his army, and kept a battalion with him as his body guard. This would certainly have prevented a military dictatorship. I only knew him slightly myself, but I had observed at the Attlee/Aung San meetings in Downing Street that he spoke with blunt directness and quiet determination, using few words, in a way we associate more perhaps with soldiers than politicians. Let me quote Rance again:
It was not surprising that Field Marshall Slim liked him (General Aung San): “the greatest impression he made on me was one of honesty. He was not free with glib assurances and he hesitated to commit himself, but I had the idea that if he agreed to do something he would keep his word”.
“I met Major-General Aung San for the first time in June 1945 and I was immediately impressed by his personality, which showed itself by his transparent honesty, his sincerity, his simplicity in dress, and his directness in thought and speech.”
He was born to lawyer U Phar and Daw Suu in the town of Natmauk, in the district of Magwe, in central Burma. His family was already known in the resistance movement, having fought the British annexation in 1886.
Having helped form the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), an underground movement of nationalists, in 1944, Aung San used that united front to become deputy chairman of Burma’s Executive Council in late 1946. In effect he was prime minister but remained subject to the British governor’s veto.
After conferring with the British prime minister Clement Attlee in London, he announced an agreement (Jan. 27, 1947) that provided for Burma’s independence within one year. Though communists had denounced him as a “tool of British imperialism,” he supported a resolution for Burmese independence outside the British Commonwealth. On January 27, 1947, Aung San and Clement Attlee signed an agreement guaranteeing Burma’s independence within a year - he had been responsible for its negotiation.
Two weeks later, Aung San signed the Panglong Agreement, with leaders from other national groups, expressing solidarity and support for a united Burma. In April, the AFPFL won 196 of 202 seats in the election for a constituent assembly. In July, Aung San convened a series of conferences at the Sorrenta Villa in Rangoon to discuss the rehabilitation of Burma.
Sao Sarm Htun (1907 - 1947), Prince of Mongpawng state, the son of Sao Khun Hti, a leader of the Shan Confederacy, which finally freed the Shan States from Mandalay, then the capital of the Burmese kings, in 1882. Sao Sarm Htun left two sons, Sao Hso Hom, who succeeded him and Sao Kaifah. Sao Hso Hom is reported as the President of the Shan Democratic Union formed by the overseas Shans in 1996. Shans had joined Burma in 1947 under the treaty called Panglong Agreement which guaranteed Full Autonomy, Human Rights and Democracy for them.
Shans and Karens claimed that Mai Pun Saw-Bwar Gyi Sao San Tun, Mann Ba Khaing were unfairly put under a very dim light as the backdrop only and General Aung San only was highlighted on every AZANI days. And Burmese Muslims also feel that although Saya Gyi U Razak and body guard Maung Htwe were Muslims, sacrificed along with General Aung San, Burmese Muslims were totally sidelined by the successive Myanmar Military Governments.
Now what? Even our beloved leader General Aung San was abandoned by the present SPDC Junta. And the following is the latest stubborn statement of SPDC on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
“There is no point at all in the United States and its liberal gang members demanding her release. Her release would be dangerous for herself and the country,” said a commentary published in newspapers considered mouthpieces of the regime.
The commentary said the roadmap would be implemented with or without Suu Kyi and her party, which won an election landslide in 1990 only to be denied power by the military.
“At this juncture, there would not be any chance for political reconciliation even if she were released,” the commentary said.
In a rare reference to Suu Kyi, the state Press said her days were “numbered” and that she and her party were heading for a “tragic end”.
This is the latest in a long series of Burmese government statements defending its continued detention of the popular opposition leader.
We hereby want to give a very strong warning to the present SPDC Generals and so called Myanmar Tatmadaw on this Martyrs’ day that if any thing happens to our Daw Suu and if unfair pressure continues on NLD, you all would be definitely punished by all the citizens of BURMA. We hope and pray that SPDC Generals could see the perspective correctly and reverse their coalition course with Daw Suu, NLD and the whole population of BURMA to avoid the fate of becoming Martyrs themselves.
And our last reminder is that if you all are executed by the people do not ever dream of becoming Martyrs. We all would definitely celebrate that day of your killings as our REAL OR SECOND INDEPENDENCE DAY only.