Ne Win

Ne Win (10 July 1910, or 14 or 24 May 1911 – 5 December 2002) was a Burmese politician and military commander who served as Prime Minister of Burma from 1958 to 1960 and 1962 to 1974, and also President of Burma from 1962 to 1981. Ne Win was Burma's dictator during the Socialist Burma period from 1962 to 1988.

Ne Win founded the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) and overthrew the democratic Union Parliament of U Nu in the 1962 Burmese coup d'état, establishing Burma as a totalitarian, one-party socialist state under the Burmese Way to Socialism ideology. Ne Win was Burma's de facto leader as chairman of the BSPP, serving in various official titles as part of his military government, and was known by his supporters as U Ne Win. His rule was characterized by isolationism, political violence, sinophobia, economic collapse, and is credited with turning Burma into one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. Ne Win resigned in July 1988 in response to the 8888 Uprising that overthrew the BSPP, and was replaced by the military junta of the State Law and Order Restoration Council. He held minor influence in the 1990s until being placed under house arrest, and died in 2002.

Date of birth
Ne Win's date of birth is not known with certainty. The English language publication Who's Who in Burma published in 1961 by People's Literature House, Rangoon, stated that Ne Win was born on 14 May 1911. Dr. Maung Maung stated in the Burmese version of his book Burma and General Ne Win, also published in English, that Ne Win was born on 14 May 1911. However, in a book written in Burmese titled The Thirty Comrades, the author Kyaw Nyein gave Ne Win's date of birth as 10 July 1910.

Kyaw Nyein's date of 1910 can be considered as the more plausible date. First, Kyaw Nyein had access to historical records and he interviewed many surviving members of the Thirty Comrades when he wrote the book in the mid-to late 1990s. (Ne Win was one of the Thirty Comrades who secretly went to undergo military training in Japanese-occupied Hainan Island in the early 1940s for the purpose of fighting for independence from the British). In his book published around 1998, Kyaw Nyein lists the names of the surviving members of the Thirty Comrades whom he had interviewed, although Ne Win was not one of them.) Secondly, when Ne Win died on 5 December 2002, the Burmese language newspapers that were allowed to carry a paid obituary stated the age of 'U Ne Win' to be '93 years'. According to Burmese custom, a person's age is their age upon their next birthday. Since Ne Win turned 92 in July 2002, when he died in December 2002 he was considered to be 93 years old. Most Western news agencies, based on the May 1911 birth date, reported that Ne Win was 91 years old, but the obituary put up by his family (most probably his children) stated that he was 93 years old, which most likely stems from East Asian age reckoning.

Death
Still under house arrest, Ne Win died on 5 December 2002 at his lakeside house in Yangon. The death remained unannounced by Burmese media or the junta. The only mention of Ne Win's death was a paid obituary notice that appeared in some of the government-controlled Burmese language newspapers. Ne Win was not given a state funeral, and his former contacts or junior colleagues were strongly discouraged from attending a hastily arranged funeral, so that only thirty people attended the funeral.

Ne Win's daughter Sandar Win was temporarily released from house arrest to attend his funeral and cremation. She later dispersed her father's ashes into the Hlaing River.