Brutal, bankrupt Burma

Thant Myint-U has a special perspective on the history of modern Burma because his family played a role, albeit a passive one, in one of the most dramatic and well-remembered events in its history. The military-socialist dictator, Ne Win, who seized power in an almost bloodless coup in 1962, overthrowing the elected prime minister, U Nu, ran a regime that was characterised by a distrust of educated or distinguished people. Ne Win himself conceived an intense jealousy of Thant Myint-U’s grandfather, U Thant, who, as Secretary General of the United Nations, was the most famous Burmese in the world. When U Thant died in 1974, Ne Win decreed that he should be buried in an obscure Rangoon graveyard, with no public ceremony. The students of Rangoon University, determined to accord him due honour, seized the coffin and held a funeral on the campus, attended by thousands, before attempting to bury him at the site of the old student union building that had been blown up during the 1962 coup.