Myanmar Martyrs' Day downgraded

Jul 18, 2008, 4:11 GMT

Yangon - Myanmar's Martyr's Day, commemorating the deaths of nine independence heroes including Aung San - the father of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, will be downgraded this year from a national to a city-level ceremony, sources said Friday.

Martyr's Day is a national holiday commemorating the assassination of Aung San, his brother Ba Win, six cabinet ministers and three others on July 19, 1947, on the orders of rival politician U Saw.

In the past a ceremony marking the assassination was held at the Martyr's Mausoleum in Yangon presided over by the Minister of Culture, but on Saturday for the first time the event will be only hosted by Yangon Mayor Brigadier General Aung Thein Linn, said an official at the Yangon City Authority, who asked to remain anonymous.

Invitations to foreign diplomats to attend the ceremony have been cancelled, an Asian diplomat confirmed.

No official reason for the downgrading of the ceremony has been announced.

Aung San, who was only 32 when he died in a hail of bullets, is still a revered figure in Myanmar, as the founder of the military and one of the key players in winning Myanmar independence from the British, which was granted months after his death in 1948.

Myanmar's current military leaders, who have ruled the country since 1988 under the equivalent of martial law, are known to have mixed feelings about Aung San and his family.

Aung San's daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, returned to Myanmar in 1988 after years studying abroad to tend her ailing mother and got swept up in nationwide anti-military demonstrations that year that forced former strongman General Ne Win to resign.

Ne Win put an end to Myanmar's brief fling with democracy in 1962, when he toppled Myanmar's first elected Prime Minister U Nu with a coup and launched the country along the economically disastrous Burmese Way to Socialism.

Although Aung San is remembered as the founder of the Myanmar military, which became a separate force in 1942, Ne Win is seen as the father of the military dictatorship that has lorded over the country since 1962.