Ne Win ( ; 24 May or 14 May 1911 or 10 July 1910 – 5 December 2002; born Shu Maung) was a Burmese statesman, military commander and the head of state of Burma from 1962 until 1988.

Ne Win was appointed Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces (Tatmadaw) on 31 January 1949. He then became head of the caretaker government between 28 October 1958 and 4 April 1960. He appointed himself Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and Prime Minister of the Revolutionary Government after staging a coup d'etat on 2 March 1962 till 2 March 1974, and was the 'elected' President of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma from 4 March 1974 to 9 November 1981. Most importantly, he founded the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) and served as its chairman for 26 years from 4 July 1962 until he 'resigned' on 23 July 1988. After 23 March 1964 when all political parties were abolished by military decree of the Revolutionary Council, the BSPP became the sole political party in Burma establishing a one party state under Ne Win.

Ne Win's exact date of birth is not known with certainty. The English language publication Who's Who in Burma published in 1961 by People's Literature House, Rangoon, stated that Ne Win was born on 24 May 1911. The late Dr. Maung Maung stated in the Burmese version of his book Burma and General Ne Win, also published in English, that Ne Win was born on 14 May 1911. However, in a book written in Burmese entitled The Thirty Comrades, the author Kyaw Nyein gave Ne Win's date of birth as '10 July 1910'.

Kyaw Nyein's date of 1910 can be considered as the more plausible date. First, Kyaw Nyein had access to historical records and he interviewed many surviving members of the Thirty Comrades when he wrote the book in the mid-to late 1990s. (Ne Win was one of the Thirty Comrades who secretly went to undergo military training in Japanese-occupied Hainan Island in the early 1940s for the purpose of fighting for independence from the British. In his book published around 1998 Kyaw Nyein lists the names of the surviving members of the Thirty Comrades whom he had interviewed although Ne Win was not one of them.) Secondly, when Ne Win died on 5 December 2002, the Burmese language newspapers which were allowed to carry a paid obituary stated the age of 'U Ne Win' to be '93 years'. According to Burmese custom a person's age is their age next birthday. Since Ne Win turned 92 in July 2002, when he died in December 2002 he was considered to be 93 years old. Most Western news agencies, based on the May, 1911 birth date, reported that Ne Win was 91 years old but the obituary put up by his family (most probably his children) stated that he was 93 years old, which would be 92 according to the Western way of calculating age.

Ne Win, given name Shu Maung, was born into an educated middle class family in Paungdalè about 200 miles north of Rangoon. Although Ne Win officially declared his ancestry to be Bamar, there is speculation that he had Chinese roots. He spent two years at Rangoon University beginning in 1929, and took biology as his main subject with hopes of becoming a doctor. However, he left university and Rangoon in 1931 to become Thakin Shu Maung, a member of the nationalist organisation Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association). Other members of the group included Aung San (father of Aung San Suu Kyi) and U Nu. In 1941 Ne Win, as a member of the Ba Sein-Tun Ok (Socialist) faction of the Dobama, was one of thirty young men chosen for military training by the Japanese . Their leader was Aung San and they formed the Burma Independence Army (BIA). During military training at the then Japanese-occupied Hainan Island Shu Maung chose a nom de guerre, Bo Ne Win (Commander Radiant Sun). In early 1942 the Japanese Army and the BIA entered Burma in the wake of the retreating British forces. Ne Win's role in the campaign was to organize resistance behind the British lines.

The experience of the Japanese Occupation in Burma worked to alienate the nationalists as well as the population at large. Toward the end of the Second World War, on 27 March 1945 the Burma National Army (successor to the BIA) turned against the Japanese following the British re-invasion of Burma. Ne Win, as one of the BNA Commanders, was quick to establish links with the British - attending the Kandy conference in Ceylon and taking charge of the anti-Communist operations in the Pyinmana area as commander of the 4th Burma Rifles after the Red Flag Communists and the Communist Party of Burma went underground to fight against the government in October 1946 and on 28 March 1948 respectively. Burma obtained independence on 4 January 1948, and for the first 14 years it had a parliamentary and democratic government mainly under Prime Minister U Nu, but the country was riven with political division. Even before independence, Aung San was assassinated together with six of his cabinet members on 19 July 1947; U Saw, a pre-war prime minister and political rival of Aung San, was found guilty of the crime and executed. U Nu as leader of the Socialists took charge of the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL) formed by the Communists, Socialists and the BNA in 1945 now that Aung San was dead and the Communists expelled from the AFPFL.

Following independence there were uprisings in the army and amongst ethnic minority groups. In late 1948, after a confrontation between army rivals, Ne Win was appointed second in command of the army and his rival Bo Zeya, a communist commander and fellow member of the Thirty Comrades, took a portion of the army into rebellion. Ne Win immediately adopted a policy of creating Socialist militia battalions called 'Sitwundan' under his personal command with the approval of U Nu. On 31 January 1949, Ne Win was given total control of the army replacing General Smith Dun, an ethnic Karen. He rebuilt and restructured the armed forces along the ruling Socialist Party's political lines, but the country was still split and the government was ineffective.

Ne Win was asked to serve as interim prime minister from 28 October 1958 to 4 April 1960 by U Nu, when the AFPFL split into two factions and U Nu barely survived a motion of no-confidence against his government in parliament. Ne Win restored order during the period known as the 'Ne Win care-taker government'. Elections were held in February 1960 and Ne Win handed back power to U Nu on 4 April 1960.

In less than two years however on 2 March 1962 Ne Win seized power, this time through a military coup d'etat described generally by the world's media as 'bloodless', although the former President of Burma Sao Shwe Thaik's young son was shot dead by a soldier. Protests and demonstrations were not tolerated and suppressed with ruthless efficiency. Rangoon University students were the first to experience this when they staged a peaceful demonstration and protest on campus against 'unjust university rules' on 7 July 1962. Ne Win sent his troops to disperse the students which led to dozens of students being shot dead and the historic Rangoon University Student Union (RUSU) building dynamited to rubble the next morning. The RUSU was a centre of anti-colonial struggles where many student leaders including Aung San and U Nu in the 1930s cut their political teeth using the RUSU as a forum for discussions, protests and political activities against the British colonial government.

In the wake of the massacre of students and destruction of the historic union building, on 8 July 1962 Ne Win addressed the nation on radio around 8 p.m. local time. His speech lasted only about five minutes. The last phrase and most memorable of his speech was 'if these disturbances were made to challenge us, I have to declare that we will fight sword with sword and spear with spear' - dah go dah gyin, hlan go hlan gyin in Burmese (Two different English translations of the speech can be read on the front page of the Rangoon Nation and the Rangoon Guardian of 9 July 1962. Part of The Nation’s headline of 9 July 1962 read ' General Ne Win States Give Us Time to Work: Obstructionists are Warned: Will Fight Sword with Sword'). This most infamous speech of his political career came to be known among the Burmese as the 'sword with sword, spear with spear speech'. Ne Win uttered these words about 30 hours after his troops had shot and killed about 100 unarmed students and about 12 to 13 hours after the RUSU building was blown up. Within less than a week, Ne Win left for Austria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom 'for a medical check up' on 13 July 1962 (News items of Ne Win's trip to these countries for 'medical check up' can be found in The Guardian and The Nation of 14 July 1962). All universities were closed for more than two years until September 1964.

Ne Win instituted a system including elements of extreme nationalism, Marxism, and Buddhism despite his lack of interest in either ideology or religion. Part of his plan was to isolate the country almost completely from the rest of the world. For about ten years from 1962 foreigners could visit the country only for 24 hours to three days, and in the early 1970s visas were extended to one week. Fear of the West was high. The draconian political and economic measures taken by Ne Win and the Revolutionary Council government that he headed were called the 'Burmese Way to Socialism' - the economy was nationalized, foreigners were expelled, political activists were imprisoned, all political parties except the BSPP abolished, and ethnic and communist insurgencies were fought with massive military force. Since independence, the main ethnic problems arose in the south-eastern part of the country, where the British had made pre-independence promises of a separate Karen state or considerable autonomy for the ethnic Karens.

Sporadic student-led demonstrations and protests against Ne Win's rule continued - often followed by closure of universities and colleges - in 1965, December 1969, December 1970, December 1974, June 1975 and September 1987. These demonstrations took place mainly on campuses located in the cities of Rangoon, Mandalay and Moulmein. The 1974 Labour Strike was participated by workers from more than 100 factories throughout the nation and on 6 June 1974 shooting of many workers and some students took place at the Thamaing Textile Factory and the Sinmalaik Dock Yard in Rangoon during which about 100 people were thought to have died. Ne Win was in Australia on an official visit; it is not known with certainty whether he ordered the shootings himself or the orders were given by his underlings. In November 1974 the former UN Secretary General U Thant died, and on the day of his funeral on 5 December 1974 Rangoon University students snatched his coffin on display at the Kyaikkasan Race Course and erected a makeshift mausoleum on the grounds of the former Rangoon University Student Union (RUSU) in protest against the government for not honouring their famous countryman with a state funeral. The military stormed the campus on 11 December killing some of the students, recovered the coffin and buried U Thant at the foot of the Shwedagon pagoda south entrance, next to the tomb of Thakin Kodaw Hmaing. Students from universities throughout Rangoon demonstrated again in June 1975 in commemoration of the previous year's Labour Strike and student-led demonstrations also occurred in March 1976, September 1987 , March and June 1988. During August and September 1988 it became a nation-wide uprising against Ne Win's and BSPP rule in what is now known as the 'Four Eights Uprising'.

The actions of Ne Win caused many in the educated workforce to emigrate, and Myanmar is still feeling its effects today. During the period of 1962 to 1988 when Ne Win formally ruled the country, the policy of isolation (autarky) was particularly damaging to the economy. The ubiquitous black market and rampant smuggling supplied the needs of the people, while the central government slid slowly into bankruptcy.

Ne Win was married on five official occasions and had at least five children from these different marriages. One of his wives, June Rose Bellamy (alias) Yadana Natme, was descended from the Burmese royal family. The 1972 death of his 'favourite' wife, Khin May Than (alias) Katie Ba Than, the mother of three of his children, Sandar Win, Phyo Wai Win and Kyemon Win, was a heavy blow to him.

In 1963 Ne Win issued a decree that 50 and 100 kyat notes would cease to be legal tender giving the reasons that they were subject to hoarding by blackmarketeers and also financing of the various insurgencies. Limited compensation was offered but not universally taken up, and people's life savings were wiped out overnight. At least one insurgency, that of the ethnic Kayan, was triggered by this act. 'Demonetization' again occurred in 1987, this time affecting the 75 kyat notes which fuelled the simmering discontent that came to a head in 1988.

Ne Win was also noted for his interest in numerology. In September 1987 he ordered the Burmese currency, the kyat, to be issued in denominations of 15, 35, 45, 75 and 90 kyats, besides the existing 5 and 10 kyat notes. He reportedly changed the currency to add up to nine because an astrologer said he would live to 90 if he did this. Ne Win was also well known for his penchant for yadaya - cabalistic rituals and spells performed in order to ward off misfortune.

On 23 July 1988, with Burma declared one of the poorest countries in the world, having been formally designated by the United Nations as a 'Least Developed Country' (LDC) in 1987, Ne Win resigned as chairman of the ruling Burma Socialist Programme Party at the height of the uprising against one-party rule.

In what he prophetically called what might be his 'last speech before a public gathering' on 23 July 1988 at the BSPP Party Congress, Ne Win stated - more than 26 years after the tragic events of 7 and 8 July 1962- that he was not involved in the 8 July 1962 dynamiting of the Rangoon University Student Union building and that it was his former deputy Brigadier Aung Gyi who gave the order. Ne Win also stated that after he learnt of the destruction of the RUSU, as a 'revolutionary leader', he had to take 'responsibility' and gave the 'sword with sword and spear with spear' speech. In this resignation speech of 23 July 1988, still using the same threatening words and tone, Ne Win also warned potential demonstrators that if the protests and 'disturbances' continued the 'Army would have to be called and I would like to declare from here that if the Army shoots it has no tradition of shooting into the air. It would shoot straight to hit'. And he added that (when the Army shoots to hit) 'it won't be easy' (in other words they will show no mercy). (The English translation of Ne Win's speech could be found in 24 July 1988 issues of the Rangoon Guardian and The Working People's Daily). The Tatmadaw troops, which shot, killed and maimed hundreds if not up to 3000 or more demonstrators in various places throughout Burma from the period of 8 August 1988 to 12 August 1988 and again on 18 September 1988 (a period known as the '8888' or 'Four Eights' Uprising), proved that Ne Win’s ‘promise’ in his ‘farewell’ speech to the nation of 'shooting straight to hit' was not an empty threat.

During the various protests and uprisings against one-party rule starting from March 1988 there were brief hopes for democracy before the military led by General Saw Maung, still under the virtual tutelage of Ne Win, seized power on 18 September 1988 and brutally crushed the popular uprising. It is widely believed that Ne Win, though in apparent 'retirement', orchestrated the coup from behind the scenes. For about ten years after the 18 September 1988 military coup Ne Win kept a low profile, but he remained a shadowy figure exercising at least some influence on the military junta called the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), later renamed the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) on 15 November 1997.

From 1998 Ne Win's influence on the junta began to wane. In late September 2002 one of his sons-in-law Aye Zaw Win (husband of his favorite daughter Sandar Win born to his late wife Khin May Than) and their three sons were found guilty of treason by a tribunal for allegedly having planned to overthrow the SPDC and were sentenced to death. Earlier, after the alleged plot had been uncovered, both Ne Win and Sandar Win were put under house arrest on 4 March 2002.

Still under house arrest, the 92-year-old Ne Win died at 7:30 am local time on 5 December 2002 at his lakeside house in Yangon. Even though Ne Win's death was not a widely noted event, worldwide news services like the BBC and CNN carried the news of his death although none of the Burmese media did. Far from holding a state funeral, no formal announcement of his death was made by the SPDC, and the only mention of Ne Win's death was a paid obituary notice that appeared in some of the state-controlled Burmese language newspapers. None of the SPDC members - his former underlings - attended his funeral.

Former contacts or junior colleagues of Ne Win were strongly discouraged from attending this hastily-arranged funeral. It was rumored that former Brigadier Aung Gyi, who in 1962-63 was Ne Win's right-hand man in the Revolutionary Council but later dismissed from the RC and jailed for a few years by Ne Win and whose 'open letter' to Ne Win was one of the sparks that started the 8888 Uprising, sought permission from the SPDC to attend the funeral but was also strongly discouraged from doing so. (As mentioned earlier, in his last speech of 23 July 1988 Ne Win had blamed Aung Gyi as ‘the real culprit’ in the destruction of the Rangoon University Student Union Building in July 1962).

The attitude and actions of SPDC to the funeral of their former boss could be contrasted with that to the funeral of U Nu, Burma's first Prime Minister whom Ne Win had overthrown in the military coup of 2 March 1962. Though none of the then State Law and Order Restoration Council members - the previous incarnation of the military junta at the time of U Nu's death on 14 February 1995- attended the funeral, the SLORC did send a wreath for 'Prime Minister (retired) U Nu'. U Nu's funeral was attended by thousands of people but only between twenty-five and thirty people were said to have attended the hastily-held funeral of Ne Win. Ne Win’s daughter Sandar Win was temporarily released from house arrest to attend his funeral and cremation. His ashes were later dispersed into the Hlaing River by Sandar Win who today remains under house arrest. Her husband and their three sons who were earlier sentenced to death for treason were also believed to remain in custody in Rangoon's Insein Jail.

There is a popular belief that it was for the benefit of his karma and in atonement for his sins that Ne Win had a pagoda built. It is called the Maha Wizaya and lies at the foot of the Shwedagon pagoda near its southern entrance. Another interesting notion is that Ne Win was the reincarnation of a Thai prince defeated in battle and executed by the Burmese, and who before he died had sworn an oath of vengeance and put a curse on the Burmese nation.

*Heroes and Villains The Irrawaddy, March 2007

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