Kyaw Zaw - Communist Leader

Communist Leader

In late July 1976, the Socialist Burmese government announced in newspapers and on state radio that Kyaw Zaw's, son Aung Kyaw Zaw and daughter Dr. Hla Kyaw Zaw had disappeared from their homes and requested the public's assistance in finding them. Within several days on August 10, 1976 the clandestine Communist Party of Burma (CPB) radio station based at that time in Kunming, China, announced that "former Brigadier Kyaw Zaw has arrived in the liberated area" i.e. the areas under the control of the CPB. The same day Kyaw Zaw broadcast an appeal on CPB radio to the people and especially requested the Burmese Army personnel to join the CPB and "the mainstream of the People's Democratic Forces". Among others, in his appeal to the Burmese Army personnel, Kyaw Zaw stated that he was one of the founding members of the Burmese Army. He rhetorically asked the troops what would have happened to the Army and the country if he had, like Ne Win, then President and long-time dictator of Burma, "acted and cavorted like a feudal play-boy prince". He also revealed for the first time that Aung San and others among the Thirty Comrades had once seriously considered removing Ne Win from the military as he had shown "fascist" tendencies under the Japanese. Kyaw Zaw stated that the plan of Aung San and other leaders to remove Ne Win from the military was unsuccessful due to Ne Win's "cunning" (kauk-kyit hmu), pleasing both sides (hna-phet myet hnar loke-hmu) and the conditions pertaining at that time i.e. during the war and immediate post-war years. Kyaw Zaw claimed that the unsuccessful and ostensible attempts to remove Ne Win from commanding the Burmese military was a "historical lesson". He exhorted the government troops not to continue as assassins and murderers in the service of the "power-mad and evil king ( min-hsoe min-nyit) Ne Win". Kyaw Zaw stated that the "most important aspects of the Army's history such as the Resistance against the Japanese March to May 1945 and the immediate post-war years were co-terminous with my personal life". Giving the examples of China and "what had happened only very recently in Indochina (i.e the Communist victories in Kampuchea, Vietnam and Laos in April and December 1975)" he requested the Army personnel not to be hesitant to "join the armed revolution led by the Communist Party of Burma".

Very few, if any, Burmese military personnel of any import heeded the call of Kyaw Zaw to join forces with the CPB. Instead, mainly due to internal rebellions by the Wa and Kokang ethnic groups which constituted the CPB's "People's Army", the CPB virtually collapsed in 1989. Even though the CPB now had a web site (CPB )and occasionally issues announcements regarding the political situation in Burma, it is now a pale shadow of its former self when it used to have, under its command, an Army or armed resistance groups in the thousands if not in the tens of thousands.

In May 1980 Ne Win's Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) government announced an Amnesty, and even though many exiled opponents of Ne Win's regime such as former Prime Minister U Nu and Bo Yan Naing, another famous member of the Thirty Comrades, returned to Burma under the Amnesty, Kyaw Zaw did not. In a speech given to the Burma War Veterans Association on July 29, 1982 Ne Win briefly "reminisced" about the Thirty Comrades days and made a brief reference to "Bo Kyaw Zaw- the one that left or ran away". ( A translation of Ne Win's speech can be read in the July 30, 1982 issues of the Rangoon Guardian and the Working People's Daily)

During the 8888 Uprising in 1988 the Military Intelligence (MI) claimed that both Kyaw Zaw and Thakin Ba Thein Tin had written to Daw Khin Kyi, the mother of Aung San Suu Kyi, and after her death, Aung San Suu Kyi was encouraged to enter politics by Communist sympathisers including Kyaw Zaw's other daughter San Kyaw Zaw. Implicit in the emphasis on this "guilt by association" is to establish the "Communist lineage" from the fact that Aung San Suu Kyi is the niece of Thakin Than Tun, the late CPB Chairman (1945–1967). Kyaw Zaw's son-in-law Thet Khaing was also accused of being a leader of the Communist Underground (UG) responsible for organising the General Strike Committees in both Rangoon and Mandalay and infiltrating the student unions.