Kyaw Nyein

Kyaw Nyein (ကျော်ငြိမ်း; ; 19 January 1913 – 29 June 1986), called honorifically U Kyaw Nyein (ဦးကျော်ငြိမ်း;), was a Burmese lawyer and anti-colonial revolutionary, a leader in Burma’s struggle for independence and prominent politician in the first decade after the country gained sovereignty from Britain.

He held multiple minister portfolios in the government of Prime Minister U Nu, served as General Secretary of the ruling political alliance, Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL), and was joint General Secretary of the Burma Socialist Party (BSP).

Born in Pyinmana, in Upper Burma, Kyaw Nyein received his higher education at the college in Mandalay and the University of Rangoon.

Kyaw Nyein was born January 19, 1913, in Pyinmana, British Burma as third child to Daw Thon and Po Toke, a lawyer and leader of the General Council of Burmese Associations.

He attended the King Edward Memorial School in Pyinmana where he befriended Than Tun, who would later become chairman of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB).

In 1930, he entered Mandalay College to study science and became engaged in university politics.

Together with Thein Pe Myint, U Tun Ohn and other students, he fought against the closing down of Mandalay College.

After passing the Intermediate exam in 1933, Kyaw Nyein and Thein Pe Myint transferred from Mandalay College to Rangoon University, where he joined the English Honors program.

Kyaw Nyein became involved in student politics at Rangoon University in the academic year 1933/34.

While hospitalized in the university infirmary in 1933, he met and befriended freshman student Aung San and later introduced him to Thein Pe Myint and Than Tun.

In the same year, he ran in the elections for the executive council of the Rangoon University Student Union (RUSU) together with Thein Pe Myint and Aung San, and after being elected became editor of the RUSU Bulletin.

By the end of 1935, the RUSU executive council was dominated by political students and presided over by Nu, a senior law student and friend who described Kyaw Nyein as "an easy conversationalist with a good sense of humour.”

During the university strike of 1936, he became known as member of a group of anti-colonial student leaders that included Aung San and Nu.

In support of an armed struggle against British colonial rule, he built an underground organization while Aung San went abroad seeking help from the Japanese.

During the Second World War and the Japanese occupation of Burma, he served in the government of Dr. Ba Maw and later became active in the anti-Japanese resistance.

A close adviser to Aung San in the final struggle for independence and during the negotiations with the Attlee government in London, he was appointed as Minister of Home Affairs in the Governor's Executive Council.

Kyaw Nyein helped to shape the decolonization policies of post-independence Burma, from an active neutral foreign policy to the building of a welfare state, and was particularly focused on the economic development and industrialization of Burma.

A moderate Socialist, he supported a Third Force position of post-colonial countries during the Cold War and was an architect of Burma's non-alignment policy.

Following his graduation in 1936, he entered law school and received his law degree in 1939.

During the university student strike of 1936, Nu, Raschid, Aung San and Kyaw Nyein formed a strike council and set the strike strategy and objectives.

As the protests persisted and spread to other schools and colleges in the country, they wrested major concessions from the university administration.

Raschid recalled that „the burden of negotiating and operational leadership fell to Aung San, Kyaw Nyein and myself." After the strike, he and the other strike leaders established the All Burma Student Union (ABSU) to organize students nationwide.

In 1937 or 1938, while preparing for his law degree, Kyaw Nyein began to work at the customs department to provide for his parents and support himself and his political friends.

In 1939, he founded together with Thakin Mya, Aung San, Ba Swe and Thakin Chit the People's Revolutionary Party (PRP), which organized clandestine activities for a planned armed struggle against the British.

Aung San left Burma in 1940 and established contact with Japanese army intelligence officer Suzuki Keiji.

In early 1941, the PRP leadership embraced Aung San's plan for an armed uprising supported by the Japanese intelligence unit Minami Kikan (ja).

Kyaw Nyein and other PRP members selected and sent young nationalists -later to be known as the Thirty Comrades- to Japan for military training.

In February 1942, he recruited over 200 Burmese soldiers of the Burma Rifles and took them in pilfered trucks to Tharrawaddy where they were supposed to foment a local rebellion together with Ne Win and Bo Yan Aung of the Thirty Comrades before the Japanese troops arrived.

The plan failed, and Kyaw Nyein and Ne Win reportedly had to walk back to Yangon by foot.

During the Japanese occupation of Burma, Kyaw Nyein was Cabinet Secretary in the Civil Executive Administration under Prime Minister Dr. Ba Maw, and later served as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs.

In August 1944, he participated in negotiations between members of the Communist Party of Burma, the PRP and the Burma National Army that led to the founding of the anti-Japanese resistance organization, Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO), which later became the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL).

He established special relations with Yugoslavia and Israel and together with his co-leader of the Burma Socialist Party, Ba Swe, initiated the Asian Socialist Conference in 1953.

As Minister of Foreign Affairs, he achieved in 1954 a breakthrough in negotiations with Japan on war reparations, which set a model for the Philippines and Indonesia that were in a deadlock with Japan over the same issue.

A rift between him and Prime Minister Nu in 1958 led to a split of the AFPFL that destabilized the government and ushered in a military caretaker regime.

In the 1960 General Elections, his party was defeated by U Nu’s Pyidaungsu party.

After the coup d’etat of General Ne Win in 1962 and the dismantling of the parliamentary democratic system in Burma, he spent five years in jail.

His last public political role was the participation in an advisory committee on constitutional reforms, where he and other veteran politicians of the democratic era recommended to reinstate parliamentary democracy, an advice that went unheeded.

Kyaw Nyein's political life was not without controversies.

Recognized as one of the founding fathers of modern Burma, a skilled diplomat, socialist theoretician and one of the most dynamic and brainy politicians in the country’s democratic era, he drew criticism for his law and order policies as home minister at the height of the insurgencies.

Burma's communists hold him responsible for their failed revolution and to this day claim he pushed them "into the jungle".