Ne Win: A Story of Power, Tyranny and Dolphin Blood

Once upon a time, there was a man who bathed in dolphin blood. He believed it would keep him young and healthy while his Stalin-inspired regime retained liberation for the people of Burma. This man was born as Shu Maung or “apple of the eye”, until in 1941 he was renamed Ne Win or the “radiant Sun” during his rise to a terrifically ruthless dictatorship. For the next 26 years, the name struck images of tyranny and violent extravagance among the people of Burma (also known as Myanmar). This dictator was no ordinary man; He picked on the boundaries of national freedom in the name of liberation, and walked on principles of hardcore Buddhism while playing with ideals of excess. Rangoon, Burma, before the Japanese bombing December 1941. Getting to Know Ne Win Shu Maung was the son of a minor civil servant from Paungdale. Failing to pass through college, he joined the Dobama Asiayone (Our Burma Association) with disillusioned aspirations to liberate his country from the clutches of British rule. This was where the promising lad met stalwarts of politics: Aung San, father of democratic activist Aung San Suu Kyi, and U Nu. By 1941 Maung was getting trained under the Japanese, only to come back as an evolved and renamed Ne Win who would take over as the Burma Independence Army chief in his home country. He saw the coming and going of the Japanese invasion, and fought tooth and nail until Burma gained independence outside the British Commonwealth in January 1948. An aggressive rise under changing colonisers had promised Ne Win a seat in the leadership when the time came. But as the glimpses of a sovereign nation appeared on the horizon, Ne Win ensured that the government of the then Prime Minister U Nu collapsed for him to take over. The Face of Aggression Now sitting in the chair as caretaker Prime Minister was a devotee of Marx and Stalin, promising his citizens an exodus into “The Burmese Way to Socialism”.