Review of Who Killed Aung San? By Kin Oung
Abiding Mysteries Surround the Murder of Burmese Hero
Jun 14, 2009
There's is little dispute about who who directly organized the mass assassination of young General Aung San and six of his closest aides on July 10, 1947. That would be U Saw, a prime political rival of Aung San's since the anti-colonial struggle of the 1930s. U Saw and four gunmen were quickly tried and executed.
The assassinations took place six months before Burma (Myanmar) finally won formal independence from Britain. Aung San Suu Kyi, the general's daughter and democracy leader who has been under house arrest in Yangon for almost 20 years now, was just a baby at the time of her father's death.
Corrupt British Officers
In Who Killed Aung San? (River Books) Kin Oung tries to flesh out the context. There is stark evidence that U Saw's had British accomplices, one of whom served time. Most of the Britons directly involved were dirty military officers involved in sales of stolen arms. There was also the British Council chief who fled the country, never to be seen again.
But who were the masterminds behind this motley crew of conspirators? How far up did they reach up in the British establishment? Who were the other Burmese accomplices? That's the abiding mystery. Oung doesn't conclude that the British government was directly behind the plot but it was possible, as this 1997 BBC series suggested. Britain has always been very slow to release documents and has acknowledged destroying documents from the period.
Perhaps they were businessmen, foreign or Burmese, who feared Aung San's pronounced leftward leanings, although he had broken with the Communist Party and his brother-in-law by this time. At any rate, there was no shortage of organizations, armed bands and politicians with hostile agendas. Other than China, probably no Asian country suffered greater destruction and suffering during World War II. Much of the country was still in chaos. U Saw himself had recently survived an assassination attempt.
The 1942 Thaton Execution
Kin Oung's examination of a controversial incident in Aung San's life is interesting if perhaps off-topic. It concerns an incident in Thaton in 1942 during the brief lawless interval between the British exodus and the Japanese occupation. Aung San, as a general in the Burmese Independence Army that accompanied the Japanese, personally conducted the public execution of the British-appointed headman.
After the war, Reginald Dorman-Smith, a former British governor who loathed Aung San (as did Winston Churchill), attempted to bring the nationalist leader to trial for the killing. Kin Oung makes a convincing case that local villagers had deemed the headman guilty of serious crimes and that rough justice was a condition of the times.
The author should be commended for pursuing the details, not sparing a graphic description of the execution by bayonet. It's the sort of ugly bit of biography that is not usually allowed to adhere to heroic figures in Southeast Asia. And for Burmese, there is no greater hero than Aung San in modern history.
Although he has lived abroad for many years, Kin Oung is an active supporter of Aung San Suu Kyi. He wisely doesn't see the need to confuse history with hagiography. He is currently expanding and updating this edition.
