Burmese Martyrs' Day

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Burmese Martyrs' Day (Burmese: အာဇာနည္‌နေ့) is commemorated every year on July 19. On this day in 1947 at approximately 10:37am, Burma Standard Time, several of Burma's independence leaders were gunned down by a group of armed men in uniform while they were holding a cabinet meeting at what was known as 'The Secretariat' in downtown Rangoon. The assassinations were planned by a rival political group, and the leader and alleged master-mind of that group Galon U Saw, together with the perpetrators, were tried and convicted by a special tribunal presided by U Kyaw Myint with two other Barristers-at-law, U Aung Thar Gyaw and U Si Bu. In a judgment given on December 30, 1947 the tribunal sentenced U Saw and a few others to death and the rest were given prison sentences. Appeals to the High Court of Burma by U Saw and his accomplices were rejected on March 8, 1948. In a judgment written by Supreme Court Justice U E Maung (1898-1977) on April 27, 1948 the Supreme Court (the highest court under the 1947 Constitution of the Union of Burma) refused leave to appeal against the original judgment. [All the judgments of the tribunal, the High Court and the Supreme Court were written in English. The judgment of the tribunal can be read in "A Trial in Burma" by Dr Maung Maung (Martinus Njhoff, 1963) and the judgment of the High Court and Supreme Court can be read in the 1948 Burma Law Reports.]

The President of Burma Sao Shwe Thaik refused to pardon or commute the sentences of most of those who were sentenced to death, and U Saw was hanged inside Rangoon's Insein jail on May 8, 1948. A number of perpetrators met the same fate. Others, who had played relatively minor roles and were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, also spent several years in prison. The assassinated cabinet members were General Aung San, Thakin Mya, Dedoke U Ba Cho, Abdul Razak, U Ba Win (oldest brother of Aung San and father of the leader of the National League for Democracy government-in-exile Dr Sein Win), Mahn Ba Khaing and Saopha of Mong Pawng. Cabinet secretary U Ohn Maung and a bodyguard called Maung Htwe were also killed in the shooting. Many Burmese to this day believe that the British had a hand in the assassination plot one way or another; two British officers were also arrested at the time and one of them charged and convicted for supplying an agent of U Saw with arms and munitions enough to equip a small army, a large part of which was recovered from a lake next to U Saw's house in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.^[1]

Soon after the assassinations, the British governor of Burma appointed Thakin Nu (later U Nu) to head an interim administration and when Burma became independent on January 4, 1948 Thakin Nu became the first Prime Minister of independent Burma. July 19 was designated a public holiday and to be known as Martyr's Day in Myanmar/Burma.