Myanmar: Burma's Junta Denies Honor to Whom Honor is Due

By Ashin Mettacara

Both within and outside of Burma, Burmese people, friends and family marked
the centennial celebration of the birthday of former United Nations Secretary General U Thant on 22 January.

In Burma's capital Yangon, the Burmese national hero, U Thant's 100th
birthday commemoration was held at the Inya Lake Hotel on Thursday evening.
The birthday anniversary celebration was organized by the U Thant Institute
and Aye Aye Thant, daughter of U Thant, who is also the president of the
Institute.

NLD party members, UN representatives, and foreign diplomats attended to the
events. Mr Bishow Parajuli, the resident UN humanitarian coordinator, read
out a message from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the ceremony, sources
said.

U Thant was born in Pantanaw, Burma (Myanmar) on 22 January 1909.

When U Nu became the Prime Minister of the newly independent Burma, he asked
Thant to join him in Rangoon and appointed him as Director of Broadcasting
in 1948. In the following year he was appointed Secretary to the Government
of Burma in the Ministry of Information. From 1951 to 1957, Thant was
Secretary to the Prime Minister, writing speeches for U Nu, arranging his
foreign travel, and meeting foreign visitors. During this entire period, he
was U Nu's closest confidant and advisor.

He also took part in a number of international conferences and was the
secretary of the first Asian-African summit in 1955 at Bandung, Indonesia
which gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement. From 1957 to 1961, he was
Burma's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and became actively
involved in negotiations over Algerian independence. In 1960 the Burmese
government awarded him the title Maha Thray Sithu as a commander in the
order of Pyidaungsu Sithu.

He was the first Asian Burmese diplomat and the third Secretary-General of
the United Nations, from 1961 to 1971. He accomplished many great things.

During the first term he was widely credited for his vital role in defusing
the Cuban Missile Crisis and for ending the civil war in the Congo.

During the second term, he established many of the UN's development and
environmental agencies, funds and programmes, including the UN Development
Programme (UNDP), the UN University, UNCTAD, United Nations Institute for
Training and Research (UNITAR), and the UN Environmental Programme.

He had also led many successful though now largely forgotten mediation
efforts, for example in Yemen in 1962 and Bahrain in 1968. In each case, war
would have provoked a wider regional conflict, and it was Thant's quiet
mediation which prevented war.

U Thant retired after ten years, still on speaking terms with all the big
powers. In 1961 when he was first appointed, the Soviet Union had tried to
insist on a troika formula of three Secretaries-General, one representing
each Cold War bloc, a self serving plan which would have maintained equality
in the United Nations between the superpowers. By 1966, when Thant was re-
elected to a second term, all of the big powers, in a unanimous vote of the
Security Council, affirmed the importance of his tenure as Secretary-General
and his good offices, a clear tribute to Thant's outstanding work.

The Six Day War between Arab countries and Israel, the Prague Spring, and
subsequent Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Indo-Pakistani War of
1971 leading to the birth of Bangladesh all took place during his tenure as
Secretary-General.

On January 23, 1971, U Thant emphatically announced that he would "under no
circumstances" run for a third term as Secretary-General. For weeks, the UN
Security Council was deadlocked over the search for a successor before
finally settling on Kurt Waldheim to succeed U Thant as Secretary-General on
December 21, 1971—Waldheim's 53rd birthday—and just ten days before U
Thant's second term was to have ended.

U Thant Crisis:

U Thant died of lung cancer in New York on November 25, 1974. When his body
was brought back to Yangon, then called Rangoon, for burial, former military
dictator General Ne Win refused it national honours.

On the day of U Thant's funeral on December 5, 1974, tens of thousands of
people lined the streets of Rangoon to pay their last respects to their
distinguished countryman whose coffin was displayed at Rangoon's Kyaikasan
race course for a few hours before the scheduled burial.

The coffin of U Thant was then snatched by a group of students just before
it was scheduled to leave for burial in an ordinary Rangoon cemetery. The
student demonstrators buried U Thant on the former grounds of the Rangoon
University Students Union (RUSU), which Ne Win had dynamited and destroyed
on July 8, 1962.

During the period of December 5–11, 1974, the student demonstrators also
built a temporary mausoleum for U Thant on the grounds of the RUSU and gave
anti-government speeches. In the early morning hours of December 11, 1974,
government troops stormed the campus, killed some of the students guarding
the make-shift mausoleum, removed U Thant's coffin, and reburied it at the
foot of the Shwedagon Pagoda, where it has continued to remain to this day.

Upon hearing of the storming of the Rangoon University campus and the
forcible removal of U Thant's coffin, many people rioted in the streets of
Rangoon. Martial law was declared in Rangoon and the surrounding
metropolitan areas. What has come to be known as the "U Thant Crisis" — the
student-led protests over the shabby treatment by the Ne Win government of U
Thant in memoriam — was crushed by the Burmese government.

Recently, the "Myanmar Thit" monthly magazine was rejected for putting a
portrait of former UN Secretary General U Thant on the cover. The military's
junta censor board also rejected two articles written by U Thant.

Unlike Burma's junta, the United Nations is planning to issue commemorative stamps in honour of U Thant on 6 February. U Thant is worthy to be honored, in fact revered as one of Asia's most venerable diplomats.


The Buddha also said in the Mangala Sutta, "Puja ca pujaneyyanam," which
means to give honor to whom honor is due. The New Light of Myanmar, daily
news paper run by the ruling junta is covering this sutta everyday, but they
don't know it exactly, nor do they ever follow the teachings of the Buddha.

Family:

U Thant was married to Daw Thein Tin, and is survived by a daughter, four
grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. His only grandson, Thant Myint-
U, is a historian and a senior official in the UN's Department of Political
Affairs and the author of The River of Lost Footsteps, in part a biography
of U Thant. Named for him

The U Thant Peace Award acknowledges and honours individuals or
organizations for distinguished accomplishments toward the attainment of
world peace.

The embassy road, Jalan U Thant in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is named after him.
A tiny island in the East River opposing the headquarters of the United
Nations, U Thant Island, is named for him.

U Thant Honorary Lecture Series has been held regularly at the United
Nations University (UNU) Headquarters in Tokyo, Japan.

United Nations University (UNU) Headquarters in Tokyo, Japan has named their
premiere conference facility after him.

The United Nations International School faculty votes to elect a Junior as
the U Thant Scholar, equivalent to valedictorian. The 2008-2009 scholar is
Maya Kurien


______________________________
Editor's Note: In his memorable book, Search for Peace, described the chain
of events that was the saddest to me in his life, and those were his efforts
to contact and discuss with USA President Lyndon Baines Johnson, to talk
about how the war in Vietnam could be ended, which deeply grieved U Thant
not only as a Southeast Asian, but as a Buddhist. He was continually and
totally ignored by Johnson over many years, who never once agreed to meet
and talk with him. -Stephen Fox, Political Editor New Mexico Sun News

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