• Political Assassination in 1949
  
• Someone informed of the “probable assassination attempt” to U Kyaw Myint (younger brother of U Tin Tut).
  
• Senior Police Officials (in charge of the investigation) were retired with generous offers.

Post by Thant Myint-U (on September 15, 2015)

The 66th anniversary of Myanmar’s tragic assassination

Friday (18 September) will be the 66th anniversary of the assassination of U Tin Tut, ICS. He was mortally wounded when a bomb exploded in his car on Sparks Street (now Bo Aung Kyaw Street). He died shortly after in Rangoon General Hospital. The mystery of who killed U Tin Tut has never been solved. His death changed the course of Burmese history.

U Tin Tut was educated at Dulwich and Queen’s College, Cambridge. He was a top scholar and athlete (captaining his college rugby team) and the first Burmese admitted into the elite Indian Civil Service. After World War Two, he was the only Burmese fluent in both financial and constitutional affairs and widely seen as the most brilliant Burmese of his generation.

He was in many ways U Aung San’s principal deputy and a key figure at both the January 1947 London negotiations and at Panglong. He was seriously injured on 19 July 1947 when U Aung San and the others were killed.

He was Burma’s first foreign minister but resigned during the increasingly chaotic and violent days of mid-1948 to become the Inspector General (i.e. commander) of the new Union Auxiliary Force, meant to counter the communists and other ‘Leftists’.

He was a nationalist but not a socialist, and wanted to maintain good relations with the West. The more radical factions in Burmese politics and in the Burma Army saw him as a threat.