Book Number: 21 626
This book provides a graphic reconstruction of a controversial episode in Burmese history-the murder of U Aung San and his six ministerial colleagues on 19 July 1947. The course of Burmese history could well have been very different if Aung San had lived to become independent Burma's first Prime Minister.
Based on eye-witness accounts, this book sheds much new light on the events of this period. The facts of the killing itself seem relatively straightforward, and are documented in the records of the trial of the assassins, but there remain many unanswered questions: Who really stood to benefit from the death of Aung San? Was there a mastermind, or masterminds, other than U Saw (who was convicted of the murder) behind the plot? If so, who were these shadowy figures, and how were they able to escape? It is the author's investigation of these issues that gives this book its particular value.
Kin Oung is especially well qualified to write this account for he has family connections that provide a direct link with the events of the late 1940s. His late father, Major-General Tun Hla Oung of Burma's Imperial Police, and his late father-in-law, Justice Thaung Sein, played vital roles in bringing to justice the assassins of Aung San. It was the reminiscences of his father-in-law, with their implication that events might not have been all that they seemed, that triggered Kin Oung's interest in this tragic episode in Burma's history.
(Bangkok, 1996) ISBN 974-9496-48-6
160 pp., 8 pp. illus., 150 x 210 mm
22.50 US-Dollar
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