1974 U Thant Uprising

Former UNSG U Thant

Believe it or not, our small group of about 50 students from the RIT’s First Year Section-D unknowingly started the 1974 student uprising. Beginning of the so-called "U Thant Uprising" was the day I will never forget even though, nowadays, I can't really recall the exact date. Then in 1974, I was a first year engineering student at the famous Soviet-built Rangoon Institute of Technology.(Bastard generals changed her name to some Yangon Technical University or some idiotic name later just to break her rebellious tradition.)

We, the whole class of First Year Section-D, were in the lecture hall 1-3-16 or 1-3-18, I don’t really remember now, without even noticing the secret preparation for the uprising, seriously following the lecture as usual. Suddenly a couple of senior students busted into the lecture theater and simply told us to get out and into the waiting buses just outside on the campus ground.

"Are you boys wearing hta-meins (woman's sarong) or what? Be a man and join us to protest the unfair treatment of our famous son of the land," that was their loud battle cry to jolt us out of the lecture hall and onto the buses. The reason for the protest was mad Ne Win's military government refusal to build a memorial and tomb for the former UN General Secretary and Late U Thant.

They were going to bury U Thant's body at Kyandaw Cemetery, and only later reluctantly agreed to let the general public show their respect at the ground of Kyaikasan Racing Ground. The funeral casket was displayed on a stand and the public were to queue up in many long lines under brightly shinning sun to give last deserving respect to the famous son of our land.

Rangoon Institute of Technology.

But on that particular day Ne Win made a serious mistake, barred the public from the ground, and allowed only the 3000 strong students of our RIT and the students from Rangoon Arts and Science University, RASU, and the senior students took the rare opportunity to stage the uprising without even letting us juniors know in advance.

When we got there at the Kyaikasan Ground we were somehow positioned right across the field from the stand where U Thant's coffin was. We could clearly see the Silvery Colored Casket and the fierce-looking throng of Military Police (MP), civilian police, and many government officials.

As we were patiently or unknowingly standing by our buses for our turn in line to reach the coffin, one senior student climbed onto the roof of one nearby bus and started giving us a rousing speech. Then was the first time and only time I saw famous student leader Tin Maung Oo close-up. He wasn't even from our RIT, he was from RASU, but he was clever enough to choose us as the spearhead of his carefully-planned uprising. We RIT students are famous for our fighting spirits as most of us are boys.

The summary of his rousing speech was that U Thant should be treated with more respect than Ne Win's Thugs had so far shown and we the brave RIT students had to take matter into our hands, so take the coffin, and build a deserving memorial for U Thant on the ground of historical Rangoon University Campus.

Then he jumped down from the bus roof and started energetically attacking the about 6 foot tall iron-bar-fence stood between us and the stand. We just followed him and the fence immediately collapsed and the individual fence poles became the weaponry for the brutal assault on the security forces guarding the coffin.

Ne Win gambling in Kyaikasan Turf Club 1949.
(In 1974 We RIT students were placed across the
field on other side and we had to demolish first
 fence and then rush across the field and then
demolish second fence shown in the photo to
reach U Thant's coffin placed by the stands.)

It was a blood bath on the manicured lawn. Many officials were either bashed or stabbed where they stood trying to stop the young students rushing towards them with murderous intents. I even saw a senior driving his pointed iron pole through the fat body of a police officer already flat on the ground. I didn't know how many exactly were killed there. Only a few days later, the government announced that the rioting students had killed at least 20 officials and injured many more that day.

Make the story short, as we reached the coffin a few seniors tried to lift the casket. I even gave a hand, but the coffin was so heavy it wouldn't budge. But many more hands joined in and they eventually rigged a crude carrier and we lifted the coffin onto our shoulders and brought it all the way to RASU.

On the way, we the marching band of rouge students were cheered and waved by many people standing by the sides of the roads as the news were spreading like a wildfire all over Rangoon. They were giving us food, water, and cold drinks as if they could correctly guess that we are almost starving. I even manage to grab a boiled egg or two while I was still carrying U Thant's heavy coffin. (Later the heavy coffin was transferred onto the Dodge truck carrying the loud speakers.)

It took us, the whole marching mob of at least 5000, more than 4 or 5 hours to reach the RASU campus by night fall. Once we got there the seniors decided to lay the coffin inside the Grand Old Convocation Hall. Us students were then organized by many seniors into various committees and sub-committees. Me and a group of my classmates ended up as the foot soldiers of a security sub-committee. We manned the now-closed iron gates of the big campus and had to check everyone coming or going through the gates.

RU Convocation Hall.

We didn't even go home, and the first few nights were like a fun-filled carnival, celebrating the rare moment of freedom. Every night, on the lawn right in front of the Convocation Hall, many seniors took turn to deliver the rousing speeches of our uprising. We were on the high all the times there in our own campus fortress. We also didn't need to worry about our food as the whole of Rangoon had sent us truck loads of packed meals, Hta-Min-Dotes. Army and Socialist Govt. also left us alone for, I think, at least first two or three weeks.

Architectural students from our RIT designed  the U Thant Memorial on the sacred ground of old Student Union building, notoriously blown up with many students still inside by Ne Win’s thugs just after 1962 coup, and our Civil Engineering students built the grave. Later U Thant’s coffin was moved into new tomb. It was a very rare moment of triumph and freedom for all of us inside the campus.

U Thant's Tomb.

The trouble started only later in the second week. The now-distressed govt. started sending their agents into the campus, and so many of them were caught by ever alert students as most of them were old or at least middle-aged men, who stood out among the young students. The ugly head of violence started showing up again among us. Every night, the security students with masks on their faces would bring out the already tortured and confessed spies into the large student crowd right in front of the RASU Convocation Hall and threw them to the violent mob waiting ready for the blood. The brutal beating and bashing would go on every night as the situation became totally out of control from the student leaders inside the Convocation Hall. Some old men from the local government councils sent in as the informants were killed there on the spot.

One night, the blood thirsty crowd decided to go out of the campus to stage a violent attack on the Hle-Dan Police Station right outside of the RASU on the Prome Road. I followed them with a burning torch in my hand and ended up just outside the Police Station which had a high fence. Our original plan was to torch the Police Station.

As we gathered there many student leaders came out of the campus and tried to persuade the students to abandon the imminent attack on the police station and come back inside the campus. During their heated arguments, me and a few students bravely crossed the wide road and peered through the cracks in the timber-planked-fence and what I saw frightened me to the bone.

Inside the large police compound were the truck loads of armed soldiers ready to fire. Their arm batches showed they were from two Chin Rifle Battalions under the Light Infantry Division 88 then stationed in Middle Burma. As a former soldier myself, I knew very well these Chin Troops were fighting the Communists on the Chinese Border and their presence here signaled the imminent assault on the RASU Campus. They are notorious for their brutality and ruthlessness towards their enemies.

U Thant's Coffin Inside RU Campus.

As we didn't want to be facing their G3s, once we knew the army presence, we came back inside and that was the last night of our pathetic little rebellion against the ruthless military government. My tail tugged between my legs, I came back home early morning and luckily my uncle who ran a ferry boat between Rangoon and our little Delta town was at home and he brought me back to his house as my mother had asked.

That night, while I was peacefully asleep on the boat on my trip away from the troubles in Rangoon, the Chin Troops circled the RASU Campus watertight and violently attacked the rebelling students inside. Witnesses later recalled that, true to their well-known reputation, the battle-hardened Chin soldiers killed many hundreds and captured thousands of students during that first night of week long brutal assault on the RASU Campus.

 According to many witnesses that first night of assault was a bloodbath in the campus. The brave or naive students who wrongly believed that the UN flag would protect them and thus gathered at the new U Thant's grave were clubbed and bayoneted to death right there by the grave under the huge blue UN flag that accompanied the coffin all the way from New York UN Headquarters. (The rumors were that many female students were gang raped and later killed by the Chin soldiers.)

Hanged Student Leader Tin Maung Oo.

A few years later I ran into an old school friend who went to DSA and became a navy officer, and he told me the sordid tale of how they rid the bodies of slain students, of course after a bottle of scotch and plenty of satay-sticks on me at Chinatown. The  Chin soldiers loaded the dead and dying from the scene of massacre onto the sand-filled Hino TE-11 trucks and, in the middle of the dark night, took them to the sand-filled naval barges waiting at the Than-Lhyet-Soon Naval Base. The bodies, many were still half-alive according to him, were then taken and dumped into the crocodiles-infested waters by the sea. Later that night I wept remembering some of my friends whom I would never seen again.

During that night of massacre inside the RASU only a few students managed to hide from the bastards and one of them was my own kid brother. He wasn't even a university student but a high school student. Just that evening he had an argument with our mother and, probably just to spite her, he went into the RASU campus just in time to get caught up in the assault. He and some other students hid in a drain and were only caught two days later by the searching Burmese soldiers. They were severely beaten and then sent to the notorious Insein Prison with the rest.

The assault on the campus caused a mass riot all over Rangoon and the army declared martial law and took stern actions against the civilian populace. The soldiers totally took over downtown Rangoon. The long hairs were popular at that time and the soldiers used their bayonets to chop the hair of any young male caught unfortunately by them on the streets of Rangoon.

Charging Soldiers.

The leader Tin Maung Oo and his sister somehow managed to escape to the border and rejoined U Nu's Exile Rebels. Later army said the uprising was planned with the money from U Nu and not a spontaneous one as we thought. A few months later Tin Maung Oo and his sister sneaked back into Rangoon with a cache of hand grenades, but caught by the army and Tin Maung Oo was immediately tried and hanged at the Rangoon Jail. (Irony is that Tin Maung Oo was a Chin too and he once joined the army but left the army later because of his mother's rejection.)

It took almost a year and a lot of Kyats to get my 15 years old brother released from the prison and he wasn't the same sweet boy no more. He was extremely lucky as many of my classmates didn't get out until many years later and when they got out they were kicked out of RIT for life. Two of my classmates were never seen again and their mothers still cried whenever I visited their houses even many years later. The universities were closed for over 6 months and we had to take our first year final exams in the respective local high schools.

U Thant's Tomb in Rangoon.

Only outcome of all those lives lost and massive suffering was a shoddy memorial for U Thant rushed by Ne Win government as a late compromise and, I think, still standing today near Shwe Dagon Pagoda. They broke the student-built grave, stole the coffin, and re-buried  it there during the middle of a very dark night.

By this my own accounts of what happened during the so called U Thant Uprising I remember the fallen students of RIT and salute them for their sacrifices and bravery for their country.

May Their Souls Rest In Peace as Ne Win’s Dark Soul Burn In Hell.

Irrawaddy Water and Ne Win's Gold Trees

General Ne Win (1911-2002).

April  1981, in the middle of a scorching Burmese summer.

Even inside the air-conditioned luxury SUV the heat was almost intolerable for the lanky Great Chairman of Burma Socialist Program Party. Burmese dictator General Ne Win, with his large entourage of ministers and heavily-armed bodyguards  in a very long motorcade, was then touring the newly-built weapon manufacturing plants and heavy industry on the remote west bank of River Irrawaddy.

Being in arid middle Burma, the landscape on both sides of the unsealed dirt road running parallel to the wide river was desolate and barren. They were just outside the small town of Minbu across the river from the city of Magwe. Except for the scrubs of dried brushes here and there the vast land was almost completely empty.

“What do they grow on this land?” asked the Great Chairman from the back seat after peering out silently for a while at the empty land and the low river through the heavily tinted bullet-proof window.

“Not much, Bo-Gyoke,” the defence minister and army chief General Kyaw Htin turned round and answered from the front passenger seat, “the farmers grow sesame and groundnuts only one season after a decent rain, that’s all they could here, I think!”

“Why don’t they grow rice here?” the Chairman enquired.

“No water, Bo-Gyoke!” General Kyaw Htin meekly replied.

“No water, Kyaw Htin, what the bloody hell you’re talking about? No fucking water here, so what the fuck is flowing in that big bloody river just down there?” the general didn’t dare to answer back and he kept his mouth shut.

“Why can’t you guys do something about it? Those lazy motherfuckers from the Agri-Forest Ministry should do something, fucking anything?” the Chairman swore at him again, and the equally lanky but totally obedient general mentally noted down to later convey the reprimand to Colonel Ye Gaung, the Minister for Agriculture and Forestry, back in Rangoon at least 500 miles away from there.

                                                       *****************************

Kanni site is across Irrawaddy from Magwe.

I was then working as an Assistant Mechanical Engineer for the Irrigation Department after graduating from Rangoon Institute of Technology, RIT, in 1980. The strongly-worded order from the Minister to build the pilot river-water-pumping station at Kanni, 12 miles south of Minbu, came to us through the Chief-Civil-Engineer, the Director-General of Irrigation, who reckoned the project involving any big pump should be the responsibility of Chief-Mechanical-Engineer, CME, my immediate boss.

It was the first ever river-water-pumping project in Burma, and coming direct from the much-feared Great Chairman, we all jumped into the project immediately. CME and senior engineers roughly drew a conceptual design and quickly worked out the details which were handed down to us junior engineers, mainly me as I was the one working directly for the CME. 

Four two-hundred-horse-power electric pumps were to be mounted on a suitably-sized floating barge to be ordered from the Burma Dockyard Corporation and later towed to the site and anchored on the river. An electrical sub-station was to be built on the river bank. As there was a massive 160 foot drop from the riverbank to the lowest possible water level in mid-summer, four sets of rigid steel pipes and long flexible tubes were to connect the pumps and the water reservoir to be built on the bank. The network of long channels dug later would eventually convey the river water to the fields of at least one thousand acres, and rice would be grown there, bingo.

Pumps on the floating pontoon.

As all the electric pumps and the substation were to be purchased from overseas, my main job was to prepare the technical specifications. We estimated that tens of millions of dollars would be needed for the equipment alone. Money then was not a problem at all. Unlike now, Burma then was awash with foreign funds from various international aid organizations as the country was close to being shamefully downgraded to LDC, least developed country, status by the UN.

Our ministry had been receiving hundreds of millions of dollars at that time to buy heavy equipment and machinery for many dam construction projects, and some of the funds from the World Bank officially known as IBRD, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, were conveniently diverted to the new project.

                                                       *****************************

Preparing the technical spec was quite easy as what we had to do was ask the local Burmese agents of prospective foreign suppliers to provide the brochures of their equipment. In most cases they simply showed up at our office and provided whatever we needed once the news of the project were known in their circle. 

A 22kv-400v Transformer Substation.

From the brochures we wrote a broad general spec for the equipment we preferred and attached it to a standard tender document and released it back to them. Once the quotations were received the CME decided which supplier to purchase from. Corruption was rife in our department and also there were so many levels of middle men between us and the manufacturers it always cost nearly double the prevailing market price for any piece of equipment and machinery imported into Socialist Burma.

Finally after almost two years all the machinery were purchased and installed at a great expense at the site. The 22KV high tension line from a nearby gas turbine power generator was extended to our Japanese-made substation and stepped down to 400V and connected direct to the three-phased German O&K pump motors already mounted on the large barge, made in Burma at the Sin-ma-like Dockyard in Rangoon, towed to the site and now anchored on the river. The main water reservoir and a network of raised-earthen-channels were already constructed by the local civil engineering division, and the first ever river water pumping station in Burma was ready to be commissioned.

                                                       *****************************

I didn’t realize I was to be involved in the commissioning till I was called into the CME office and told to get my arse to Minbu because I was the only one who knew the whole project and its machinery. The only way to get there then was by car, and it took almost two days in an old Landover to Magwe and then on a car ferry to Minbu across the more than two-mile wide Irrawaddy. When I got to Kanni site I found out things were not as ready as expected. Steel pipes were not all welded yet and the old electrical foreman and his team from our Rangoon Workshops were still wiring the motors.

Pipes from the pumps to the reservoir.

I had to work with the team of fitters and welders there almost 12 hours a day for more than three weeks welding and connecting the pipes, and finally ran into serious trouble with the old electrical foreman. From the motor manuals I discovered that his wiring were wrong and the motors would run in reverse, but the old man was stubborn and wouldn’t redo his wirings. I was his son’s age and a freshly graduated mechanical engineer. How could I know what was the right or wrong connections for the giant electric motors? Luckily the CME had arrived and stood by me and finally the error was fixed.

The day came for the first test run and our CE and CME, the chief engineer from the Electric Power Corporation, the local military divisional commander, the local party chief, and many other local dignitaries were there to witness the auspicious occasion. They were on the barge first when I started the high-powered pumps. The huge pumps were unexpectedly running dry and the vibrations were so severe that everyone on the barge all disappeared back onto the dry bank, and watched me and a Second Assistant Engineer, SAE, the local in-charge of the pumping station on the now severely shaking barge from a safe distance.

I had to stop the pumps and then suddenly a thought struck and I remembered to prime the pumps one by one. I bravely or stupidly climbed onto and straddled the 30” diameter outlet pipe of the furthest pump, opened the priming port, asked the SAE to start the motor, and poured bucket loads of water from the river into the port while the pump was shaking like hell and giving me a painful bum massage. The SAE guy was a great help as he didn’t abandon me and then he drew water from the river with a tin bucket for me.

I kept on pouring the water and finally the vibrations stopped and water from the river was continuously drawn. It took only about ten or fifteen minutes for the water from that pump to reach the high bank above and the crowd gathering there cheered loudly once they saw the massive water column coming out of the large pipe. I primed the rest in the same way and within an hour all four pumps were running and water was pouring out of the pipes into the head-reservoir and then into the main channel. The water flow was so strong it broke the channel and I was forced to stop the pumps as the pumped water was flowing back down into the river.

Settling Reservoir.

My job there was done and next day I came back to Rangoon and prepared the final costing on the equipment and the whole schematic of the station and then reported to CME. I was later told that, in total, close to 80 million US$ were spent on that pet project of General Ne Win.  It might also include the large expense of building a sealed asphalt road from Minbu to the site. But the minister and the CE were very happy with the outcome and even told my boss to prepare for many more similar projects. But the promised projects didn’t realize and finally a horror story, or a rather funny story, was soon spreading like wild fire among us junior engineers.

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General Ne Win (1984).

Our minister had kindly invited the Great Chairman to visit the pumping station and his grace had finally appeared at the pump site with his usual entourage of ministers and heavily-armed bodyguards in a very long motorcade again in December 1983. The following was reputedly the exact conversation between him and our minister on the now wet river bank later that day after he had inspected the whole operation. Pumps, pipes, reservoir, the water channels, almost everything.

“So what are the peasants growing now with water from the river?” asked the dictator.

“In addition to the usual sesame and groundnuts for one season annually, they are able to grow cotton now, Bo-Gyoke,” replied respectfully the minister.

“No rice?” asked the disappointed Chairman.

“No Bo-Gyoke, soil here is too sandy for the rice paddy,” minister replied.

“How many acres of cotton?” asked the dictator.

“About a thousand acres now. Up to 2000 in next two years, Bo-Gyoke,” replied the minister.

“What was the total cost of the project again?” asked the dictator.

“Total in US dollars, 80 million, Bo-Gyoke,” replied the minister rather hesitantly, and shit hit the fan.

“You know, with that sort of money, I know exactly what sort of crop they should be growing here!” remarked the now-suddenly-annoyed dictator, “Do you know which one?” but knowing him very well the minister didn’t dare to open his mouth.

“Shwe-Bins (Gold Trees), fucking Shwe-Bins, fucking idiots! 80 million bucks for 2000 fucking acres of bloody cotton! Motherfucking thieves!” that was his last words there on that day, and he turned back, climbed into his SUV, and never returned there again for the rest of his long life.

                                                       *****************************

Irrawaddy's Bank at Magwe.

Everything about all future river water pumping projects was then immediately mothballed. Only a minimal maintenance budget was allocated for that lone pumping station still running and we all forgot about river water pumping as IBRD was, by that stage, financing our department heavily again for their ground water pumping projects all over middle Burma. Fortunately, I received a generous scholarship from abroad and I left Burma in April 1984. 

Even after nearly 30 years, sometimes I dreamt of that project on the Irrawaddy. The mighty river has such an effect on us Burmese. I couldn’t forget her. Especially when I hear the song “Irrawaddy” by Khin One. The giant river definitely did affect Mr. Kipling. Rather remarkably. “On the Road to Mandalay, where the flying fishes play,” his famous poem says it all.

Then one day late last year I was greatly surprised by the series of front page news from the Burmese Government’s mouth piece Myanmar-Ahlin newspaper. Being seriously homesick I try to read Burmese newspapers on the net almost everyday. The generals were then daily attending the opening ceremonies of similar river water pumping stations all over the country. 

According to the news, there are now more than 300 pumping stations along the Irrawaddy and Chindwin rivers. All built in the last twenty years with Burma’s own money. The generals have defaulted on all their loan repayments in 1987 and the IBRD has stopped lending them money since. Without a single aid-dollar from the West for more than 2 billion dollars worth of investment at the eighty’s prices!

I don’t think they have even altered our old design a bit. All the photos look similar. Similar barges. Similar configurations of pipes and pumps. The only visible change was the diesel engines instead of the electric motors in some regions where the electricity supply was inaccessible. The army has even built a factory making these diesel engines with Chinese assistance. Burmese bureaucracy now has a new government department to build and run all these pumping stations. MWRUD, Myanmar Water Resources Utilization Department. 

I was thoroughly amazed. Why the about turn? Had the generals accidentally found Ne Win’s Shwe-Bins to go with their rather expensive, and possibly environment-damaging, river-water pumping stations? It didn’t take long to find out the answer.

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General Ne Win (2001).

The accidental godsend was not the river water itself. It was the silt suspended in it. The tons of silt the murky Irrawaddy has been carrying down along her thousand miles since time began, since the Indian sub-plate crashed into the Asian plate and formed the Himalayas and the massive river systems all over India, China, and South East Asia many, many millions of years ago. The same tons and tons of silt that has been continually forming the still southward-expanding fertile Delta that famously made Burma the rice bowl of the British Empire where once the sun never set.

The same annoying tons of fine silt that frequently choked the inlet strainers of our big pumps and worn down and nearly damaged the impellers inside were carried over the bank and deposited evenly on the irrigated land, and over the years the once almost useless, porous sandy soil was gradually transformed into a precious fertile land good enough for the rice paddy, the golden crop of the world today. 

With an average 5000 acres of three-season rice-growing land reclaimed by one river water pumping station, the Burmese generals are laughing now and proudly boasting about their more than 1.5 million new acres of fertile paddy land from those projects alone since they took control of Burma in that bloodied coup of 1988 just after the failed 8-8-88 uprising.

Ne Win would have smiled at his former underlings from his grave if he heard the good news himself. But unfortunately he has not a grave as the universally-hated dictator’s body was burnt like the mongrel dog he was. And where were the ashes thrown away? Nobody knows!

                         (Following video is late Khin One's song "Irrawaddy" covered by Ringo.)

“At the end of the clouds, far away in the west,

      some place on the horizon, sun is still shinning.

  Beneath the hanging mist, in the shadow of Arrakan range,

      on the opposite shore, the river course is already dark.

  Against the cold northerly wind, small birds are still flying,

      as the day is fading, and night is approaching.

  Journeying a long way, tired and exhausted,

      with traveling companions, they are coming home for night.”

  (Irrawaddy, Irrawaddy, Irrawaddy, Irrawaddy)

“Flowing steady, mature and vast,

      just look at him, majestic appearance, the natural great.”

  (Irrawaddy, Irrawaddy, Irrawaddy, Irrawaddy)

“Grayness of cold, some far away place in the roof of the world,

      a small silver star is twinkling.

  The color of sky is all blue, in the summer night,

       for his lonesome journey, the river king is traveling.”

  (Irrawaddy, Irrawaddy, Irrawaddy, Irrawaddy)

My First Post

Hello and good day to all my readers!

I have been writing about my birth country Burma for the New Mandala blog hosted by ANU in Australia for almost 3 years and many people often asked me to start my own blog. I believe one reason was some of my writings are too personal and thus not really appropriate for a serious academic blog like New Mandala. And also my writings have become controversial because of the political contents.

For example my current ongoing series - Burma in Limbo - attracts so many adverse critics because of my attempt to correct the widely but wrongly accepted history of modern Burma. So I've created my own blog and I think I should re-post all my writings from New Mandala first and then the continuation of current Burma in Limbo series.

I don't really know how long  that series will go as I am also learning and evolving while working on the series. Thanks for reading my work and please accept my apology for not allowing the comments as my writings are too controversial and also I hate to see negative and hateful comments. Also because of the time constraint as I'm still working to earn my living. My email is hlaoo1956@gmail.com if you want to contact me, seriously.

Thanks and you all are welcome! Here are the links to some of my posts on the New Mandala.

Irrawaddy Water and Ne Win's Gold Trees
1974 U Thant Uprising
The Scourge of Burma - Part 1
Burma in Limbo - Part 1