ေအာက္ပါ BBC ကထုတ္လႊင္႔ ခဲ႔တဲ႔ TV အစီအစဥ္ မွာ
Friends of the Burma Hill Peoples အဖြဲ႔နဲ႔ ကရင္လူမ်ိဳးေတြ ေပါင္းျပီး ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္းကို လုပ္ၾကံခဲ႔တယ္လို႔ စြတ္စြဲထားတယ္။ ဒီ
ကိစၥကို ၥ
Friends of the Burma Hill Peoples အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ျဖစ္တ႔ဲ H.A. Stonor, ex-Welch Regiment ရဲ႔ျပန္လည္ေျဖရွင္းခ်က္ပါ။
The BurmaNet News, October 7, 1997
INDEPENDENT COMMENTARY: RECENT
SPECULATIONS ON AUNG
SAN'S ASSASSINATION
by H.A. Stonor
[Note from BurmaNet Editor:
BurmaNet was pleased to receive this commentary
from H. A. Stonor, one of the
British officers who were in Burma at the time
of General Aung San's assassination. Few British officers from that period
are still alive today, so H. A.
Stonor's commentary is particularly
valuable. Another commentary on how the assassination
plot developed was
recently posted by "Naing Win / Kyin Ho, M.D." on the
burmanet-l newsgroup,
so we have also included it
below.]
AN INDEPENDENT COMMENTARY ON
RECENT SPECULATIONS
CONCERNING THE ASSASSINATION OF
AUNG SAN
3 October 1997
On 19 July, the BBC transmitted a
television documentary, "Who Really Killed
Aung San?", which was also
the subject of an article by the correspondent
Fergal Keane, printed in the
Guardian newspaper on the same day and in the
South China Morning Post on 22
July. In these reports it was insinuated that
the assassination of Aung San and
five fellow cabinet members in July 1947
was somehow the work of a secret
conspiracy involving not only a jealous
Burmese politician, U Saw, but
also an amalgam of different British officials,
including the former governor Sir
Reginald Dorman-Smith and Captain David
Vivian as well as a group of
British Burma veterans in the United Kingdom,
known as the Friends of the Burma
Hill Peoples.
With time and distance, it is, of
course, easy to play flights of fancy with
the
fading traces of history.
However, as one who not only lived through those
terrible events in Rangoon but
was also a member of the Friends of the Burma
Hill Peoples, the programme made
no sense whatsoever and was a gross
distortion of many events.
Firstly, while U Saw was executed
for his alleged role in the
assassinations, it is
true that many contemporaries -
both Burmese and British officials alike -
always felt further questions
needed to be answered over U Saw's actions at the
time: whether he had organised
the assassinations alone, on behalf of others, or
whether, indeed, he was victim of
one of the most successful frame-ups in
history. Certainly, in the
violent climate of those times, there were many
armed
bands and much confusion in the
country. U Saw himself had recently survived
an assassination attempt on his
own life, while Aung San and his Cabinet had
been discussing the mass arrest
of political opponents that very day.
Furthermore, there was evidence of
two rogue British officers, Captain Vivian
and Major Young, conspiring for
financial gain to supply U Saw with arms.
Most curious of all, however,
were the actions of U Saw himself. As a former
prime minister, U Saw no doubt
retained political ambitions, but his behaviour
that day was not that of a man
who had any immediate master-plan for power.
In fact, U Saw did absolutely
nothing but sit in his house until he was
arrested.
Moreover, although the BBC
programme conveniently overlooked this, there
was never any question of the
British governor, Sir Hubert Rance, appointing U
Saw in Aung San's place. If
guilty on his own, it appeared to be a heinous
crime without motive.
Inevitably, although U Saw was
swiftly arrested, speculation remained rife in
the following weeks. The Burmese
communists, who were also armed and then
very powerful, immediately
believed that there must have been some British
involvement, since they claimed
that Aung San, frustrated at the slow pace of
the British withdrawal from
Burma, was considering rejoining their ranks.
Aung San, it should be
remembered, was a co-founder of the Communist Party
of Burma in 1939. Indeed, I
personally witnessed Aung San's brother-in-law,
the communist leader Than Tun,
march into the British Club in Rangoon after
the assassination, where he began
smashing glasses and generally berating the
British.
Those of us in the British
services, however, began to hear other reports,
suggesting other possible
perpetrators amongst Aung San's political rivals, who
had either framed U Saw or used
him as their fall-guy. To my knowledge,
although such reports were
circulating, they were never formally investigated,
but amongst names mentioned were
socialist activists, whose leader, U Nu, was
fortuitously absent from the
Secretariat building that day and subsequently
became prime minister in Aung
San's place. Other rumours pointed at corrupt
factions within the fledgling
Burmese armed forces (later led by Ne Win), who
were privately jealous of Aung San's
dominating political power.
The BBC programme, however, did
not look at these issues, but instead tried to
link together a very disparate
group of British officials and Burmese
individuals
in an alleged conspiracy where
the only real connections are a succession of
red
herrings or, at best,
coincidences. Much was made by Feargal Keane and the
programme-makers of the alleged
discovery of secret British documents, but
not only were they not quoted but
the programme did not even demonstrate
how all the different characters
were supposed to be linked by these supposed
new documents. Indeed, in some
cases, the individuals never even met nor were
they known to each other.
Much, for example, was made of
the connection between U Saw and the British
Council representative, John
Bingley, but the BBC programme provided no
evidence of complicity in the
actual crime other than the suggestion that
Bingley, who was acting as an
individual, made a nod and a wink remark to U
Saw at a tea party. U Saw's
actions in prison certainly show that he looked to
Bingley for help and the
communications between the two men appeared odd,
but again this does not prove
Bingley's involvement or, more importantly, go on
to link to any greater
conspiracy.
Another example is the role of
the two corrupt British officers, Captain Vivian
and Major Young, who had stolen
guns for profit, and these were later found
conveniently dumped in the lake
by U Saw's house and were reportedly used in
the assassination plot. In another
curious twist, in 1949, when serving a jail
term in Insein prison for his
crimes, Captain Vivian was released in fighting
after troops from the Karen
National Union took control of the town during the
civil war that broke out after
independence. The programme then follows this
trail and concentrates on the
embarrassment of a later British government,
which was hardly surprising, at
repatriating a convicted gun-runner, Vivian,
back to the United Kingdom from a
war-zone. However, again, this does not
link--nor was it shown to
link--into any secret British conspiracy.
And this is where the programme
made even more dangerous errors, when, in
the attempt to find an
instigator, it tried to somehow link the Karen question
with the assassination of Aung
San. The group it accused was the Friends of
the Burma Hill Peoples. As a
member of this group, all I can say is that
such an
accusation is manifestly untrue.
Firstly, the Friends of the Burma
Hill Peoples did not really develop into
action
until 1948, a year after Aung
San's death. Secondly, the Friends began life
as a
talking shop of British veterans
who, quite rightly in the view of Burma's
subsequent history, were
concerned at the deep ethnic tensions within the
country and the fate of Burma's
ethnic minority peoples, who had been
extremely loyal to the Allied
Forces in the fight against fascism in the Second
World War.
Thirdly, diverse opinions were
expressed within the group, which included
such very different people as
H.N.C. Stevenson, the ex-director of the Frontier
Areas Administration, Sir
Reginald Dorman- Smith, the former Burma
governor, Raymond Blackburn, the
socialist M.P., and Frank Owen, the editor
of the Daily Mail. Indeed, when a
number of us considered it appropriate to
become more actively involved in
support of the Karen cause (which,
incidentally, was the subject of
a very accurate television documentary,
"Forgotten Allies", in
April 1997 by the BBC's historical Timewatch series),
members such as Stevenson made
their disagreements clear and withdrew.
Finally, the programme was quite
wrong to state that the ex-Burma governor,
Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, was
the key figure behind the Friends of the
Burma Hill Peoples. Although
Dorman-Smith attended at least one meeting out
of interest (where he said
nothing), the main activist was, in fact, Col.
Cromarty-Tulloch, a veteran of
Force 136.
Of course, since Dorman-Smith was
well-known to U Saw, it no doubt suited
the programme makers to play up
this angle in the attempt to try and prove a
secret British plot, but it has
no foundation in historical fact.
Nevertheless, the
late Dorman-Smith is the
main target for many of the innuendoes
and
conspiracy theories that are
trailed throughout the programme.
However, not only is there no
suggestion of how this plot was organised by
Dorman-Smith (or how it was
supposed to work), but the programme
conveniently overlooked
Dorman-Smith's words and actions at the time, when
he was a man very much in tune
with the sufferings and feelings of Burma. In
1950, for example, following the
assassination of the Karen leader Saw Ba U
Gyi, Dorman-Smith movingly wrote
to The Times newspaper in London, "The
major tragedy is that Burma is
losing her best potential leaders at far too
rapid
a rate. Aung San, U Saw, Saw Ba U
Gyi, U Tin Tut, all have gone." This was
the contemporary view of
Dorman-Smith, but the programme-makers
selectively disregard it, even
though his analysis has great meaning today.
Fifty years later, the tragedy of
Burma lives on and, even worse, by quite
incorrectly trying to link
innocent Karens and the long-departed colonial
government in the assassinations,
the programme has a very distorting
resonance in the present tense.
In Burma today, the sufferings of the Karen
people are immense, and the
struggle for justice and democracy for all the
peoples of Burma still continues.
Very sadly, then, the
programme--and its many speculations--have recently
been picked up by Burmese
government officials for their own propaganda
purposes in denouncing both the
British and Karen nationalists, so it is vital
that the historical record is put
straight now before any further damage is
done.
There are, indeed, questions to
be asked and many lessons to be learned from
the tragic events at Burma's
independence, but these must be based on reality
and not with the leisure of
conspiracy theories and speculation.
H.A. Stonor, ex-Welch Regiment and
Friends of the Burma Hill Peoples
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