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| U Thant |
Early Times
He was born in Pantanaw, Lower Myanmar (Burma), and was educated at the National High School in Pantanaw and at University College, Yangon,
where he studied history. He was the eldest of four sons and was born
into a family of well-to-do landowners and rice merchants. His father,
Po Hnit, had helped establish The Sun (Thuriya) newspaper in Yangon and had been educated in Calcutta, British India.He was also a founding member of the Myanmar Research Society. U Thant's father, according to Thant Myint-U (U Thant's grandson), had both Buddhist and Muslim forebears.His father died when Thant was fourteen, and a series of inheritance disputes forced Thant's mother, Nan Thaung, and her four children into difficult financial times. His brothers U Khant, U Thaung, and Tin Maung, were also politicians and scholars.
After university, Thant returned to Pantanaw to teach at the National
School and became its headmaster by the age of twenty-five. During this
time he became close friends with future prime minister U Nu, who was from neighbouring Wakema
and was the local superintendent of schools.He regularly
contributed to several newspapers and magazines under the pen name
"Thilawa" and translated a number of books, including one on the League of Nations.U Thant was a devout Buddhist.
Civil servant
When U Nu became the prime minister of the newly independent Myanmar, he asked U Thant to join him in Yangon and appointed him director of broadcasting in 1948. In the following year he was appointed secretary to the government of Myanmar in the Ministry of Information. From 1951 to 1957, Thant was secretary to the prime minister, writing speeches for U Nu, arranging his foreign travel, and meeting foreign visitors. During this entire period, he was U Nu's closest confidant and advisor.
He also took part in a number of international conferences and was the secretary of the first Asian–African summit in 1955 at Bandung, Indonesia, which gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement. From 1957 to 1961, he was Myanmar's permanent representative to the United Nations and became actively involved in negotiations over Algerian independence. In 1961, the Myanmar government awarded him the title Maha Thray Sithu as a commander in the order of Pyidaungsu Sithu.
UN Secretary-General
He began serving as acting Secretary-General from November 3, 1961, when he was unanimously appointed by the General Assembly, on the recommendation of the Security Council in Resolution 168, to fill the unexpired term of Dag Hammarskjöld. He was then unanimously appointed secretary-general by the General Assembly on November 30, 1962, for a term of office ending on November 3, 1966. During this first term he was widely credited for his role in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis and for ending the civil war in the Congo. He also said that he wanted to ease tensions between major powers while serving at the UN.
U Thant was re-appointed secretary-general of the United Nations by
the General Assembly on December 2, 1966, on the unanimous
recommendation of the Security Council. His term of office continued
until December 31, 1971, when he retired. During his time in office, he
oversaw the entry into the UN of dozens of new Asian and African states
and was a firm opponent of apartheid
in South Africa. He also established many of the UN's development and
environmental agencies, funds and programmes, including the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN University, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and the UN Environmental Programme.
Unlike his two predecessors,He retired after ten years on speaking terms with all the big powers. In 1961, when he was first appointed, the Soviet Union had tried to insist on a troika formula of three secretaries-general, one representing each Cold War
bloc, something which would have maintained equality in the United
Nations between the superpowers. By 1966, when He was reappointed,
all the big powers, in a unanimous vote of the Security Council,
affirmed the importance of the secretary-generalship and his good
offices, a clear tribute to his work.
The Six Day War between Arab countries and Israel, the Prague Spring and subsequent Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 leading to the birth of Bangladesh all took place during his tenure as secretary-general.
He was widely criticized in the US and Israel for agreeing to pull UN troops out of the Sinai in 1967 in response to a request from Egyptian president Nasser.U Thant tried to persuade Nasser not to go to war with Israel by flying to Cairo in a last-minute peace effort.
His once good relationship with the US government deteriorated rapidly when he publicly criticized American conduct of the Vietnam War. His secret attempts at direct peace talks between Washington and Hanoi were eventually rejected by the Johnson Administration.
He followed UFO reports with some interest; in 1967, he arranged for American atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald to speak before the UN's Outer Space Affairs Group regarding UFOs.
On January 23, 1971, U Thant categorically announced that he would
"under no circumstances" be available for a third term as
secretary-general. For many weeks, the UN Security Council was
deadlocked over the search for a successor before finally settling on Kurt Waldheim
to succeed U Thant as secretary-general on December 21, 1971—Waldheim's
53rd birthday—and just ten days before U Thant's second term was to
end.
In his farewell address to the United Nations General Assembly,
Secretary-General U Thant stated that he felt a "great sense of relief
bordering on liberation" on relinquishing the "burdens of office". In an editorial published around December 27, 1971, praising U Thant, The New York Times
stated that "the wise counsel of this dedicated man of peace will still
be needed after his retirement". The editorial was titled "The
Liberation of U Thant".
While serving as secretary-general, He lived in Riverdale, Bronx, on a 4.75-acre (1.92 ha) estate near 232nd Street, between Palisade and Douglas Avenues.
Death
U Thant died of lung cancer in New York on November 25, 1974. By that time Myanmar was ruled by a military junta which refused him any honors. The then Myanmar president Ne Win was envious of U Thant's international stature and the respect that was accorded him by the Myanmar populace. Ne Win also resented U Thant's close links with the democratic government of U Nu which Ne Win had overthrown in a coup d'état on March 2, 1962. Ne Win ordered that U Thant be buried without any official involvement or ceremony.
From the United Nations headquarters in New York where he was laid in state, U Thant's body was flown back to Yangon,
but no guard of honour or high ranking officials were on hand at the
airport when the coffin arrived except for U Aung Tun, deputy minister
of education, who was subsequently dismissed from office.
On the day of U Thant's funeral on December 5, 1974, tens of
thousands of people lined the streets of Yangon to pay their last
respects. U Thant's coffin was displayed at Yangon's Kyaikasan race
course for a few hours before the scheduled burial.
The coffin of U Thant was then snatched by a group of students just
before it was scheduled to leave for burial in an ordinary Yangon
cemetery. The student demonstrators buried U Thant on the former grounds
of the Rangoon(Yangon) University Students Union (RUSU), which Ne Win had dynamited and destroyed on July 8, 1962.
During the period of December 5–11, 1974, the student demonstrators
also built a temporary mausoleum for U Thant on the grounds of the RUSU
and gave anti-government speeches. In the early morning hours of
December 11, 1974, government troops stormed the campus, killed some of
the students guarding the makeshift mausoleum, removed U Thant's coffin,
and reburied it at the foot of the Shwedagon Pagoda, where it has continued to lie.
Upon hearing of the storming of the Yangon University campus and the forcible removal of U Thant's coffin, many people rioted in the streets of Yangon. Martial law was declared in Yangon and the surrounding metropolitan areas.
What has come to be known as the U Thant Crisis—the student-led
protests over the shabby treatment of U Thant by the Ne Win
government—was crushed by the Myanmar government.
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