kyaw thu

Aung San in Kayah State: inside the political storm

LOIKAW — One night in 2012, in the Kayah State capital of Loikaw, a group of ethnic Karenni youths were engaged in clandestine activity. In advance of Martyrs’ Day, 19 July, they crept around the town putting up posters of General Aung San, the Independence hero assassinated along with eight of his colleagues on that date in 1947. They also cleared the weeds around a stone monument for the nine martyrs in a central park, and 50 youths marched on the street to commemorate them. Over the last four years, Martyrs’ Day has become a major public event. The veneration of Aung San is being actively promoted by a civilian government led by the man’s daughter, State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party. Formerly, the ruling military suppressed or downplayed the memory of Aung San, fearing it would bolster popular support for their political nemesis, Aung San Suu Kyi. The Karenni youths were making a defiant, and potentially dangerous, act. However, six years on, the same Karenni youths and local ethnic groups who wish to promote their own histories and heroes are resisting the public veneration of Aung San, whose memory they…