U Saw - Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment

On 19 July 1947, a gang of armed paramilitaries broke into the Secretariat Building in downtown Rangoon during a meeting of the Executive Council (the shadow government established by the British in preparation for the transfer of power) and assassinated Aung San and six of his cabinet ministers; a cabinet secretary and a bodyguard were also killed. The evidence clearly implicated U Saw, who was tried, condemned, and sentenced to death. He was executed at Insein Jail on 8 May 1948. According to an eyewitness, a prison warden present at the execution, U Saw refused to have a hood over his face before he was hanged. U Saw was buried, according to custom, in an unmarked grave within the prison.

Many mysteries still surround the assassination. There were rumours of a conspiracy involving the British — a variation on this theory was given new life in an influential, but sensationalist, documentary broadcast by the BBC on the 50th anniversary of the assassination in 1997. What did emerge in the course of the investigations at the time of the trial, however, was that several low-ranking British officers had sold guns to a number of Burmese politicians, including U Saw. Shortly after U Saw's conviction, Captain David Vivian, a British Army officer, was sentenced to five years imprisonment for supplying U Saw with weapons. Captain Vivian escaped from prison during the Karen uprising in Insein in early 1949. Little information about his motives was revealed during his trial or after the trial.