U thant
Thant (in Burmese, သန့်; Pantanaw, Burma, January 22, 1909-New York, United States, November 25, 1974), known as U Thant, was a Burmese diplomat who from 1961 to 1971 served as Secretary General of the United Nations Organization. He is the first person to hold the secretariat from an Asian country, as well as the first from a developing country.
Before turning to diplomacy, he was a professor in his hometown, with a bachelor's degree from Rangoon University. After the independence of Burma in 1948, he rose through the national political ladder, becoming one of the most faithful advisors to Prime Minister U Nu. Following the organizational success of the Bandung conference, in 1957 he was appointed Burmese ambassador to the United Nations.
The death of Dag Hammarskjöld due to a plane crash led to his appointment as UN Secretary General by acclamation on November 30, 1961, and he was re-elected in 1963 and 1966. Throughout his tenure, in which he stood out Due to his negotiating and moderate spirit, events such as the missile crisis in Cuba, the resolution of the Congo Civil War, the outbreak of the Six-Day War with the subsequent occupation of Israeli territories, and the numerous processes followed. decolonization in Asia and Africa. At the beginning of 1971 he gave up performing again and was replaced by Kurt Waldheim.
Thant was one of the most respected political figures among the Burmese people, but the 1962 coup and the overthrow of U Nu caused him to fall out of favor with the military junta led by Ne Win. After dying in 1974 from lung cancer, his mortal remains were buried in Rangoon under riots between students and the police, as the military government had refused to pay him state honors.
Biography
U Thant was born in Pantanaw, a village in southwestern British Burma, the eldest of four children in an ethnic Bamar land-owning family. His father Po Hnit was a rice merchant who had been educated in Calcutta and was the only person in the village who could speak English, so he instilled in his children a passion for learning.
The death of his father when he was 14 years old complicated the family finances, and as the first-born he had to combine his studies with part-time jobs. After reaching the age of majority, he studied a teaching degree in History at the University Rangoon, where he would coincide with the student leader Thakin Nu, years later considered one of the bastions of Burmese independence.
After graduating with the highest grade of his class, he worked as a teacher at his hometown high school and was later promoted to principal. In 1942, at the height of World War II, Burma was occupied by the Japanese Empire and the new government ordered Thant to move to Rangoon to head the Educational Reorganization Committee. However, after a few months he returned to his old position. in Pantanaw. He also dedicated himself to translating books into Burmese and writing opinion articles under a pseudonym.
The name "U" is a Bamar honorific, similar to the British Sir, often used for high authorities. In 1961 he was decorated General (Maha Thray Sithu) of the Order of the Union of Burma.
He was married to Daw Thein Tin and had four children, two of whom survived him: his daughter and an adopted son. His grandson Thant Myint-U is a historian and a high-ranking official in the UN Department of Political Affairs. On the other hand, Thant professed Buddhism and was considered a person of strong religious convictions that he tried to apply in all facets. of his life.
Political career
Burma had gained independence from Britain in 1948, and Thant was recruited as the new government's communications director by his former colleague Thakin Nu, who was one of the leaders of the nationalist bloc and had taken over as prime minister a year earlier.
One of his first missions was to negotiate with the leaders of the Karen people to avoid an ethnic conflict, something he failed to achieve despite his efforts. The insurgents even went so far as to surround his native village and burn the family lands, although they were later repressed by the army. This experience is considered to have had a great influence on his future work as a diplomat. In a climate of political tension, it was characterized for defending moderate positions between Burmese nationalists and British loyalists.
Over time he held more important positions such as the director of broadcasting and the secretariat of the Ministry of Information. Between 1954 and 1957 he was personal secretary to Prime Minister U Nu, for whom he wrote speeches and organized trips abroad. This made him one of his closest collaborators.
At the same time, Thant would end up becoming one of the most prominent faces in Burmese diplomacy. In 1955 he served as secretary of the Bandung conference, considered a letter of introduction to the newly independent African and Asian countries, and whose agreed principles gave rise to the Non-Aligned Movement.
The Burmese government appointed Thant as permanent representative of Burma to the United Nations in 1957. In a context marked by the decolonization of Asia and Africa, he played an important role as a mediator in the negotiations on the Belgian Congo (1960) and Algeria (1961).
Secretary-General of the United Nations
U Thant held the position of Secretary General of the United Nations from November 30, 1961 to December 31, 1971, being the first Asian citizen to lead. In that decade the UN General Assembly went from 104 members to add 132, and his entire term was marked by the geopolitical tensions of the Cold War and decolonization.
First term (1961-1966)
The Burmese ambassador was elected to the post after his predecessor Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash. When an agreement was not reached between the United States and the Soviet Union, most countries defended that the new secretary general should not be European or American. The reluctance of some states led to Thant only being appointed to fill the vacancy of Hammarskjöld until 1963, by virtue of Security Council Resolution 168. Later it was ratified unanimously until 1966.
Thant had to face in his first year the missile crisis in Cuba that was about to unleash a nuclear confrontation in 1962. The conflict broke out on October 16, after the United States government decreed a “blockade naval" and the deployment of fleets on Cuba upon discovering the installation on the island of tactical missiles of the Soviet Union.
Considering the risk of the situation escalating, the Secretary General mediated between leaders John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, requesting a temporary suspension of arms shipments until the two sides met. The US and the USSR reached an agreement that left Cuba out and the UN was only informed after the event. Even so, Thant is considered to have helped prevent the outbreak of a world war between the two greatest powers of the time.
The other major conflict was the Congo Civil War. In 1962 Moise Tshombe's Katangese secessionists attacked a UNOC military detachment, which had been deployed after the assassination of leader Patrice Lumumba. Not having guaranteed freedom of movement on the ground, Thant authorized a UNOC military operation, known as "Operation Grandslam", which succeeded in undermining rebel forces and reintegrating Katanga into the Republic of the Congo. the first time the UN used force to implement Security Council decisions.
In December 1963, serious clashes broke out in Cyprus between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities, which led the Security Council to deploy a Peacekeeping Force (UNFICYP). At first, it had a limited mandate of three months, but Turkey rejected the conclusions of the mediator appointed by Thant, the Ecuadorian Galo Plaza Lasso, and UNFICYP ended up becoming a permanent mission. Today the Cypriot conflict is still pending. resolution.
Second term (1966-1971)
As a result of his work, the Security Council unanimously re-elected him for a second term that would expire on December 31, 1971. At first it was known that Thant did not want to continue, but the lack of a consensual successor led him to change his decision. During this period, numerous agencies, foundations and development plans were consolidated, such as the UN Institute for Vocational Training and Research (1963), the Conference on Trade and Development (1964), the Program of the UN Development Program (1969), the United Nations Environment Program (1971) and the United Nations University (1973).
The mandate was marked by the Six-Day War that pitted Israel against a coalition of Arab countries in May 1967. Days before the outbreak, the Emergency Forces (UNEF) from the Sinai peninsula had been expelled to Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's request, against a backdrop of rising tensions in the Middle East. After neither side budged, and Thant made an unsuccessful trip to Cairo to negotiate a cessation of hostilities, Israel made a preemptive strike that it ended with an Arab defeat and the occupation of several territories. The UN adopted Security Council Resolution 242 in which it called for the Israeli withdrawal, but its role was called into question because Thant had accepted the UNEF evacuation order.
The escalation of the Vietnam War led Thant to openly criticize the work of President Lyndon B. Johnson, after he rejected a UN mediation between Washington D.C. and Hanoi, and called for an end to bombing « no conditions" on North Vietnam. This fact, added to his role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, clouded the good relations he maintained with the US government.
Other conflicts in which the Security Council had to intervene were the escalation of the Cyprus problem (1967), the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact (1968) and the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971). In the latter, he denounced the inaction of the Security Council but did not invoke article 99. Two months before his mandate expired, the General Assembly approved Resolution 2758 by which the People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China as "the China's sole legitimate representative to the United Nations".
Retreat
In early 1971, in his last year as Secretary General, Thant refused to stand for a third term. After lengthy negotiations, the Security Council chose Austrian politician Kurt Waldheim as his successor.
The Burmese diplomat maintained his residence in the New York neighborhood of Riverdale. Within weeks of leaving office, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, so he stayed in the United States for treatment. Although his wife never adjusted well to American life, Thant refused to return to a Burma, which since 1962 had become a military dictatorship led by Ne Win, after having overthrown Prime Minister U Nu. Despite the fact that Thant was the most recognized Burmese figure abroad at the time, he did not enjoy the sympathy of the military regime due to its proximity to U Nu.
During the last three years of his life, he dedicated himself to writing his memoirs, giving lectures on foreign policy, and receiving treatment for the disease.
Death
U Thant died on November 24, 1974 at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York, at the age of 65, a victim of cancer. Among the many condolences of the international community, US President Gerald Ford lamented the loss of "a man of peace" and "who was always loyal not to a bloc, but to humanity".
Fulfilling his will, the mortal remains were repatriated to Burma and buried in Rangoon. However, the military junta denied him any state funeral, and no member of the government received the procession at Mingaladon airport. Although the junta had planned a low-key ceremony on December 5, the coffin was carried away by the attending students and placed in it. they were located in a mausoleum that they had built on the remains of the Student Union, which had been demolished by the junta six months earlier.
For six days there were demonstrations near the University, until on December 11 several members of the Burmese army besieged the area, exhumed the coffin and buried it in a mausoleum in the Kandawmin cemetery, near the Shwedagon temple, where it remains today. This news led to a series of mobilizations and riots against the junta, which would end up decreeing martial law in Rangoon to quell them.
Legacy
Throughout his tenure, U Thant was defined as a humble, pacifist person with strong moral convictions influenced by Buddhism. With regard to the use of violence, he argued with regard to the Vietnam War that "military methods will never bring about a peaceful solution," and in this sense he was also very critical of the US occupation of the Dominican Republic and of the Czechoslovak invasion of 1968. Part of his work was conditioned by the Cold War and the disputes between blocs in the UN Security Council.
In the Congo Civil War, however, he did advocate the use of force by UNOC, as Katangese rebels had encouraged the civilian population to attack all UN-related personnel. In that sense, a principle of proportionality was applied, since Katanga had attacked first. That was the first time that the UN used force to implement the decisions of the Security Council.
In 1978 his memoir book, View from the UN, was published posthumously, in which he collected all his years of experience as UN Secretary General. In his honor, New York's Belmont Island, a tiny artificial islet located opposite the United Nations headquarters, was unofficially renamed "U Thant Island."
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