NEWSMAKER-Myanmar's Ne Win caught up in new power struggle
source : Reuters
YANGON, March 10 — Forty years after seizing power in a coup, Myanmar's former military leader Ne Win has found himself caught up in what appears to be another power struggle.
Myanmar's military authorities said on Saturday they had arrested the son-in-law and three grandsons of the reclusive former president for a coup plot against them.
Diplomatic sources said on Sunday the head of the air force, the chief of police and an army general had been sacked in connection with the alleged coup, and said a dozen more senior officers had also been sacked or would be arrested later.
Ne Win ruled the Southeast Asian country for over 25 years until he relinquished formal power in 1988, but he is thought to still wield considerable political influence and commands the respect of many senior figures in the current military regime.
Kyaw Win, Myanmar's deputy chief of military intelligence told reporters Aye Zaw Win, and his three sons -- Aye Ne Win, Kyaw Ne Win and Zwe Ne Win in their mid-20s -- were arrested at a restaurant as they were waiting to discuss their coup plot with a senior commanding officer. Security around the lakeside residence of 92-year old Ne Win in central Yangon had been tightened after the arrests, witnesses said.
Ne Win's admirers say he held the country together when political instability and ethnic strife threatened to tear it apart. His critics say he was a mysticism-obsessed despot who presided over Burma's decline from one of the richest countries in Asia to one of the poorest.
Under his system of a ''Burmese way to Socialism'' the country, since renamed Myanmar, became increasingly isolated from the rest of the world and its economy stagnated. The deeply superstitious Ne Win believed the number nine had mystical significance, and in the 1980s replaced the country's banknotes with denominations which are multiples of nine, such as 45-kyat and 90-kyat notes.
THIRTY COMRADES
Born into a sino-burman family in a small town around 190 miles (305 km) northwest of Yangon, Ne Win studied at a Yangon university before becoming a postal clerk.During the second world war he became one of the legendary ''Thirty Comrades,'' a group of Burmese trained by the Japanese to fight British rule of Burma. It was then he took ''Ne Win'' meaning ''brilliant sun'' as his nom de guerre, replacing his real name, Shu Maung.
The Thirty Comrades were led by General Aung San, a hero in Myanmar for his fight against British rule. Aung San, father of pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who is being held under de facto house arrest in Yangon by the current regime, was assassinated in 1947 when the country was on the brink of independence.
After Burma won independence in January 1948, Ne Win was appointed vice commander-in-chief of the military in August, becoming commander-in-chief the following year. In 1958, amid political uncertainty following a split in Burma's ruling party, he was asked to form a caretaker government and served as prime minister. His caretaker government won widespread respect, and in 1960 he held democratic elections and handed over power to the winning party.
But on March 2, 1962 he seized power, saying the country was in danger of disintegration, and imprisoned large numbers of opponents including politicians, journalists and students.He was often ruthless in purging those whose loyalty was in question. In 1976 he uncovered an alleged plot by some army officers to kill him. The alleged ringleader was sentenced to death.
He was married six times, and officially has six children.
Ne Win stepped down in July 1988, shortly before a nationwide uprising demanding democracy and political reform. Pro-democracy demonstrations were brutally suppressed. A new military regime took power in the aftermath of the upheaval, and although Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won elections in 1990 by a landslide, it was never allowed to govern. The country remains impoverished and is regarded as a pariah state by much of the international community because of its human rights record. (Additional reporting by Andrew Marshall, Nopporn Wong-Anan in Bangkok)