U Thant
(22 January 1909 ? 25 November 1974) was a
Burmese
diplomat
and the third
Secretary-General
of the
United Nations
, from 1961 to 1971. He was chosen after his predecessor
Dag Hammarskjold
was killed in a plane crash in September 1961.
"U" is a word in
Burmese
, roughly equal to "Mister." "Thant" was his only name. In Burmese he was known as
Pantanaw U Thant
. His home town is
Pantanaw
, so this means "Mr Thant of Pantanaw"
When U Nu became the Prime Minister of the newly independent
Burma
, he asked Thant to join him in Rangoon and appointed him as 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. 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
.
From 1957 to 1961, he was Burma's Permanent Representative (
Ambassador
) to the United Nations, and became 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).
Thant began serving as Acting Secretary-General from November 3, 1961, when he was unanimously appointed by the General Assembly, on the recommendation of the
Security Council
, to fill the unexpired term of
Dag Hammarskjold
. He was then unanimously appointed Secretary-General by the General Assembly on November 30, 1962 for a term of office ending on November 3, 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 appointed to a second term as Secretary-General of the United Nations by the General Assembly on December 2, 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
United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), the
UN University
,
UNCTAD
,
UNITAR
and the
United Nations Environment Programme
.
He had also led many successful though now largely forgotten peace making efforts, for example in
Yemen
in 1962 and
Bahrain
in 1968. In each case, war would have provoked a wider regional conflict, and it was Thant's quiet mediation which prevented war.
Unlike his two predecessors, Thant retired after ten years on speaking terms with all the big powers. In 1961 when he was first appointed, the
Soviet Union
had tried to insist on a
troika
formula of three Secretaries-General, one representing each
Cold War
bloc, something which would have maintained equality in the United Nations between the superpowers. By 1966, when Thant was reappointed, all the big powers, in a unanimous vote of the Security Council, affirmed the importance of the Secretary-Generalship and his good offices, a clear tribute to Thant's work.
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 time as Secretary-General.
He was widely criticized in the US and Israel for agreeing to pull UN troops out of the
Sinai
in 1967 in response to a request from
Egyptian
President
Nasser
. U Thant 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.
[1]
On January 23, 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 December 21, 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 relinquishing the 'burdens of office'. In an editorial published around December 27, 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".
U Thant's tomb, Shwedagon Pagoda Road, Yangon
U Thant died of
lung cancer
in
New York
on November 25, 1974. By this time Burma was ruled by a
military junta
which refused him any honors. The then Burmese President
Ne Win
was envious 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
coup d'etat
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 flown back to
Rangoon
but no guard of honour 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 then snatched by a group of students just before it was scheduled to leave for burial in an ordinary Rangoon cemetery. The student demonstrators buried U Thant on the former grounds of the
Rangoon University Students 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 December 11, 1974, government troops stormed the campus, killed some of the students guarding the makeshift 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 of U Thant ? was crushed by the Burmese government.
In 1978, U Thant's memoirs
View from the UN
was published, by the American publishing house
Doubleday
.
- The
U Thant Peace Award
acknowledges and honours individuals or organizations for distinguished accomplishments toward world peace.
- The
embassy
road, Jalan U Thant in
Kuala Lumpur
,
Malaysia
is named after him.
- A small island in the
East River
, directly across
Manhattan
from the headquarters of the United Nations, is named for him.
- U Thant Honorary Lecture has been held regularly at the United Nations University (UNU) Headquarters in Tokyo, Japan.
- ↑
Letter to U Thant / James E. McDonald. - Tucson, Ariz. : J.E. McDonald, 1967. - 2 s;Druffel, Ann;
Firestorm: Dr. James E. McDonald's Fight for UFO Science
; 2003, Wild Flower Press;
ISBN
0-926524-58-5