U Thant

U Thant
File:U Thant Bio Photo.jpg 3rd UN Secretary-General
Born	January 22, 1909 Pantanaw, Burma
Died	November 25, 1974 New York City, United States
Term	November 3, 1961 – November 30, 1962 (acting) November 30, 1962 – December 31, 1971 (elected)
Predecessor	Dag Hammarskjöld
Successor	Kurt Waldheim

Maha Thray Sithu U Thant (January 22, 1909 – November 25, 1974) was a Burmese diplomat and the third Secretary-General of the United Nations, from 1961 to 1971. He was chosen for the post when the then Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in an air crash in September 1961. To date, he is the only Asian to have served as UN Secretary-General.

'U' is an honorific in Burmese, roughly equal to 'Mister'. Thant was his only name. In Burmese he was known as Pantanaw U Thant, a reference to his home town. "Maha Thray Sithu" is a title, similar to a knighthood, awarded by the Burmese government.

U Thant was born at Pantanaw, Burma, and was educated at the National High School in Pantanaw and at University College, Rangoon, where he studied history. He was the eldest of four sons and was born into a family of well to do land-owners and rice merchants. His father U Po Hnit had helped establish The Sun newspaper in Rangoon and was also a founding member of the Burma Research Society. His father died when Thant was 14 and a series of inheritance disputes forced Thant's mother and her four children into difficult financial times.

After university he returned to Pantanaw to teach at the National School and became its headmaster by the age of 25. During this time he became close friends with future Prime Minister U Nu, who was from neighbouring Maubin and who was the local superintendent of schools. Thant regularly contributed to several newspapers and magazines, under the pen name Thilawa, and translated a number of books including one on the League of Nations.

When U Nu became the Prime Minister of independent Burma, he asked Thant to join him in Rangoon, appointing him as the government's Director of Broadcasting in 1948. In the following year he was appointed Secretary to the Government of Burma in the Ministry of Information. From 1951 to 1957, Thant was Secretary to the Prime Minister, writing speeches for U Nu, arranging his foreign travel, and meeting foreign visitors. He also took part in a number of international conferences and was the secretary of the first Asian-African summit in 1955 at Bandung, Indonesia, which gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement.

All this time, he was U Nu's closest confidante and advisor. From 1957 to 1961, he was Burma's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, become actively involved in negotiations over Algerian independence. In 1960 the Burmese government awarded him the title Maha Thray Sithu as a commander in the Pyidaungsu Sithu Thingaha Order (similar to an order of knights).

Secretary General

Thant began serving as Acting Secretary-General since 3 November 1961, when he was unanimously appointed by the General Assembly, on the recommendation of the Security Council, to fill the unexpired term of Dag Hammarskjöld. He was then unanimously appointed Secretary-General by the General Assembly on 30 November 1962 for a term of office ending on 3 November 1966. During this first term he was widely credited for his role in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis and for ending the civil war in the Congo.

U Thant was re-appointed for a second term as Secretary-General of the United Nations by the General Assembly on 2 December 1966 on the unanimous recommendation of the Security Council. His term of office continued until December 31, 1971, when he retired. During his time in office, he oversaw the entry into the UN of dozens of new Asian and African states and was a firm opponent of apartheid in South Africa. He also established many of the UN's development and environmental agencies, funds and programmes, including the UN Development Programme, the UN University, UNCTAD, UNITAR and the UN Environmental Programme.

The Six Day War between Arab countries and Israel, the Prague Spring and subsequent Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 leading to the birth of Bangladesh all took place during his tenure as Secretary-General.

He was widely criticized in the US and Israel for agreeing to pull out UN troops in the Sinai in 1967 in response to a request from Egyptian President Nasser. In fact, countries such as India and Yugoslavia, which had contributed the troops had already agreed to pull them out, and U Thant was the only world statesman who tried to persuade Nasser not to go to war with Israel, by flying to Cairo in a last minute peace effort.

His once good relationship with the US government deteriorated rapidly when he publicly criticized American conduct of the Vietnam War. His secret attempts at direct peace talks between Washington and Hanoi were eventually rejected by the Johnson Administration.

Thant followed unidentified flying object reports with some interest; in 1967, he arranged for American atmospheric physicist Dr. James E. McDonald to speak before the UN's Outer Space Affairs Group regarding UFOs.

On 23 January 1971 U Thant categorically announced that he would 'under no circumstances' be available for a third term as Secretary-General. For many weeks, the UN Security Council was deadlocked over the search for a successor before finally settling on Kurt Waldheim to succeed U Thant as Secretary-General on 21 December 1971- Waldheim's 53rd birthday- and just ten days before U Thant's second term was to have ended.

In his farewell address to the United Nations General Assembly Secretary-General U Thant stated that he felt a 'great sense of relief bordering on liberation' on relinqushing the 'burdens of office'. In an editorial published around 27 December 1971 praising U Thant the New York Times stated that 'the wise counsel of this dedicated man of peace will still be needed after his retirement'. The editorial was entitled 'The Liberation of U Thant'.

Death

U Thant died of lung cancer in New York on November 25, 1974. By this time Burma was ruled by a military government which refused him any honors. The then Burmese President Ne Win was jealous of U Thant's international stature and the respect that was accorded him by the Burmese populace. Ne Win also resented U Thant's close links with the democratic government of U Nu which Ne Win had overthrown in a military coup on March 2, 1962. Ne Win ordered that U Thant be buried without any official involvement or ceremony.

From the United Nations headquarters in New York, U Thant's body was brought back to Rangoon but no honour guards or high ranking officials were on hand at the airport when the coffin arrived.

On the day of U Thant's funeral on December 5, 1974, tens of thousands of people lined the streets of Rangoon to pay their last respects to their distinguished countryman whose coffin was displayed at Rangoon's Kyaikasan race course for a few hours before the scheduled burial.

The coffin of U Thant was snatched by a group of students just before it was scheduled to have left for burial in an ordinary Rangoon cemetery. The student demonstrators buried U Thant on the former grounds of the Rangoon University Student Union (RUSU), which Ne Win had dynamited and destroyed on July 8, 1962.

During the period of December 5 through December 11, 1974, the student demonstrators also built a temporary mausoleum for U Thant on the grounds of the RUSU and gave anti-government speeches. In the early morning hours of 11 December 1974, Burmese troops stormed the campus, killed some of the students guarding the make-shift mausoleum, removed U Thant's coffin, and reburied it at the foot of the Shwedagon Pagoda, where it has continued to lie.

Upon hearing of the storming of the Rangoon University campus and the forcible removal of U Thant's coffin, many people rioted in the streets of Rangoon. Martial law was declared in Rangoon and the surrounding metropolitan areas. What has come to be known as the U Thant crisis—the student-led protests over the shabby treatment by the Ne Win government to U Thant—was crushed by the Burmese government.

In 1978, U Thant's memoirs View from the UN was posthumously published, initially by the American publishing house Doubleday.

Belmont Island, in New York City waters across from United Nations headquarters, has been unofficially renamed U Thant Island and dedicated to the late Secretary-General's legacy.

U Thant was married to Daw Thein Tin. He was survived by a daughter, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. His only grandson, Thant Myint-U, is an historian and a senior official in the UN's Department of Political Affairs.

External links

• Official bio on UN website