Demise of The Ludu Daily
The peace talks of 1963 marked a very exciting time in the post-war history of Burma. Expectations ran high and the Ludu family was no exception in looking forward to a new beginning for the country with peace in the offing, after 15 years of civil war that had flared up and smouldered in turn stifling development and progress. The paper campaigned for the success of the peace talks just as it had done in the early 1950s for world peace and an end to the civil war in Burma. It turned out to be a false dawn, and as the peace process broke down U Hla's oldest son Soe Win, aged 22 and a leader of the Rangoon University Students Union, went underground with several other student leaders to join the Communists. Four years later, in 1967, he was killed with several others in a bloody purge in the jungles of the Bago Yoma range of mountains, repercussions from the Cultural Revolution in China which had also led to violent anti-Chinese riots in Rangoon. The Ludu couple, true to Burmese Buddhist tradition, declined an invitation by the authorities to visit their son's jungle grave. Soe Win's younger brother Po Than Gyaung (b. 1945) was arrested in July 1966 and was put in detention (without charge or trial) till May 1972 for alleged clandestine student political activities. Po Than Jaung spent the earlier part of his detention inside Mandalay jail and later on the Cocos Island in the Andaman Sea. The military regime closed down the Ludu Daily on July 7, 1967. U Hla had been busy on the state-sponsored campaign for literacy that year in the heat and dust of Upper Burma.
When the Hanthawaddy newspaper was launched in 1969, to fill the void in Mandalay, U Hla helped the editor U Win Tin, who was to become a leader of the National League for Democracy, in getting the paper off the ground, just as he had helped the Mandalay Thuriya when its editor and publisher U Tun Yin died during the war and his 18 year old son had to step into his father's shoes. U Hla was a firm believer in the pivotal role of the printed word in nation building and in collaboration with others in order to achieve this common goal.
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