Min Aung Hlaing shames Burma independence founder Aung San

Mizzima Editorial

Burma junta leader Min Aung Hlaing is responsible for a pattern of removal of statues and images of General Aung San around Burma, effectively shaming the founder of Burma’s armed forces and the architect of Burmese independence.

Aung San will be rolling in his grave. Images of the general are slyly being removed by a military coup-maker who has further ruined the image of the military in the eyes of the Burmese public. Aung San would be shocked by the actions of the bloodthirsty coup-maker, who since 2021 has been at war with his own people.

The latest action happened in the dead of night in Yangon. Myanmar junta forces destroyed two bronze statues of General Aung San in Yangon’s South Okkalapa and Thaketa townships on the night of 1 July, according to local residents.

Earlier, military forces removed a portrait of General Aung San from the front gate of imprisoned State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s residence at No. 54 University Avenue Road, Yangon, under the pretext of conducting a guest-list inspection, according to Mizzima sources.

These removals are part of a broader pattern. Min Aung Hlaing’s military junta has been systematically demolishing and removing bronze statues of General Aung San across the country. On the night of 9 June, a 15-foot bronze statue of General Aung San weighing approximately 740 kilogrammes, located on Kan Road in Taungoo, Bago Region, was demolished and removed during a city-wide blackout. Myanmar’s junta leader Min Aung Hlaing and newly appointed Chief of General Staff Ye Win Oo had visited Taungoo on 6 June, three days before the demolition.

Since the February 2021 coup, the junta has carried out at least seven documented removals of General Aung San’s bronze statues, all conducted during midnight blackouts over the last two years – in Thazi, Mandalay Region, in Pobbathiri, Naypyidaw, in Bago, in Pathein, Ayeyarwady Region, Yangon, and most recently in Taungoo.

What is it about the stature of Min Aung Hlaing that prompts him to erase the memory of Burma’s founder and general who helped create the Tatmadaw or Burmese military forces? Instead of leveraging the standing of the “Father of the Nation”, Burma’s new “president” in civilian garb appears to be keen to erase him from memory.

Any steadfast and confident leader would not be giving the order to remove these statues and images in the middle of the night.

No doubt the ego of the Burmese leader was pumped up during his recent state visits to India and China as he seeks to cement his role under a quasi-civilian administration shoehorned into place following “sham” elections that sought to change the regime from green to white – a regime that continues to maim and kill its own citizens.

Clearly, Min Aung Hlaing fears standing in the shadow of the man who founded his country, the man who is the father of the “people’s choice”, Aung San Suu Kyi – a woman now locked away with no “proof of life”. Maybe this is why he has ordered his men to take a sledgehammer to statues of Bogyoke Aung San, a man brutally taken down in a hail of bullets on the 19 July 1947 in the Secretariat Building in Rangoon.

As the days, weeks and months tick by under Min Aung Hlaing’s new regime, it is becoming increasingly clear that the emperor has no clothes. The leaders of India, China and Russia will not tell him, as they have too much to gain from interacting with this charlatan, not fit to be associated with the “Father of the Nation”.