Remembering U Thant and His Achievements

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Remembering U Thant and His Achievements
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By SAW YAN NAING Thursday, January 22, 2009

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The 100th birthday of the late UN Secretary General U Thant is being observed on Thursday—and nowhere with more reverence than in his native country, Burma.

Family members, friends, former colleagues and foreign diplomats were gathering for a commemoration ceremony at the Inya Lake Hotel on Thursday evening, said his son-in-law, Dr Tin Myint Oo.

U Thant, the third general secretary to run the UN since its post-war foundation, served from 1961 to 1971 and won lasting respect for his many achievements.


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He succeeded Dag Hammarskjöld when the Swedish diplomat died in an air crash in the Congo while on a mission to help end the civil war there.

U Thant was credited for completing Hammarskjöld’s work in the Congo and for helping to defuse the Cuban missile crisis shortly afterwards.

In the 10 years U Thant was in office, the UN faced many other world crises, including the Vietnam War and the 1965 conflict between India and Pakistan.

Colleagues who traveled with him to crisis zones recalled that o¬n many occasions he made bold and single-minded attempts to restore peace.


At home at the UN, U Thant established many of the world body’s development and environmental agencies, funds and programs, including the UN Development Programme, the UN University, the UN Institute for Training and Research and the UN Environmental Programme.

Veteran Burmese journalist Win Tin said in Rangoon that U Thant was a successful UN head and “different.”

“We should keep him in our memory,” Win Tin said. “We have to be proud of him.”

Veteran Burmese politician Thakin Chan Htun agreed, and said in Rangoon: “We have to be proud of him. We should not forget him and we should honor him.”

In a speech in New York in 2003, the then UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, hailed U Thant’s significant contributions in development programs, poverty alleviation, education, environmental protection and health.

Kofi Annan also praised U Thant’s treatment of the media. “It was U Thant who more than anyone before him opened up the United Nations to the media, because he understood that for the organization to earn the support of the world’s people, they must be kept fully informed and aware of its work.”

U Thant’s press secretary, Rames Nassif, once recalled: “For U Thant, the press conference was a pleasant experience. He had natural warmth towards journalists and was comfortable with them. He enjoyed thinking of himself as a former journalist, and often mentioned this.”

In his earlier years as a journalist in Burma, U Thant regularly contributed to magazines and newspapers under several pen names, including Thilawa, and translated a number of books, including one on the League of Nations.

U Thant served as secretary for Burma’s first Prime Minister U Nu, a close friend, from 1951 to 1957. He wrote speeches for U Nu, organized his overseas travel and meetings with foreign guests.

San San Nu, a daughter of U Nu, said of U Thant: “He was very clever and he was very generous, too. That’s why our father called on him to work with him.”

U Thant was born on January 22, 1909, in Pantanaw, in lower Burma’s Irrawaddy division. He was educated at the National High School in Pantanaw and at Rangoon University.

He died of lung cancer in New York on November 25, 1974, and his body was returned to Burma—but became the center of a political row.

Burma’s ruling dictator, Gen Ne Win, refused to hold a state ceremony for U Thant and also ignored his family’s request to have him interred near Rangoon’s Shwedagon Pagoda.

A group of students seized U Thant’s coffin from the airport and kept it at Rangoon University campus. Troops stormed the campus, killing at least 13 students and injuring 70 others. Around 3,000 students were arrested.

Finally, U Thant was laid to rest in a tomb near Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon. The currently UN General Secretary, Ban Ki-moon, visited the tomb during a visit to Burma in May last year.


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