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Person1915 – 1947

Aung San

Also called: Bogyoke Aung San

Leader of the Burmese independence movement, active in the Thakin movement, assassinated in 1947 on the eve of independence

As a student union leader at Rangoon University he led the 1936 strike and became general secretary of the Thakin movement. In 1940 he slipped out of the country and, leading the "Thirty Comrades" trained by Japan, formed the Burma Independence Army. When the independence Japan promised proved hollow, he organized the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League and rose against Japan in March 1945. In January 1947 he agreed on independence with British prime minister Attlee, but on 19 July he and members of his cabinet were assassinated by gunmen sent by a political rival. His daughter Aung San Suu Kyi later led the democracy movement.

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1 related event

  1. 1
    1930 – 1948Thakin Movement in Burmaleader

    Young Burmese founded the We Burmans Association (the Thakins) to resist Britain, calling themselves "masters" (thakin) to assert that the Burmese were the masters of their own country.

Themes this person appears in

  • National Movements in Asia and Africa1915 – 1948

    From the Hussein–McMahon correspondence to the founding of Israel — three decades in which India, West Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa, swept up in the tide of self-determination after the First World War, pressed toward independence and modernization