A letter I wrote to Irrawaddy ref--Col.Chit Myaing--

" well respected" Chit Myaing?

Tuesday, June 21, 2011 11:02 AM

From:

"Kyi May Kaung"

To: "franz fanon" , "Irrawaddy Magazine" , "Dr. Sein Win"

Cc: "kyi may kaung", "inge sargent" , "Howard Sargent" , "Maureen Aung Thwin" , "Bertil Lintn "During a nearly 10-hour interview with me in 1995, the well-respected nationalist former Colonel Chit Myaing . . . "

Dr. Zarni

Dear Irrawaddy Editors,

You did not provide space for comments with ref. to Dr. Zarni's most recent piece.

Though I agree with Zarni on most of the points he makes,

Col. Chit Myaing cannot be considered "well respected" nor "nationalistic" - unless he is well respected by the junta, which I also doubt. I also doubt so-called "nationalism" of the junta, which is more like racism.

In the Greater DC area Chit Myaing is more or less a pariah. The junta people go to their own monastery and the dissidents have their own monks.

In about 1999, while at Radio Free Asia, I produced a "book review" presented as interview excerpts and a radio play of Inge Sargent (former Hsipaw Sawbwa's widow) - based on at least 6 hours of face to face interviews with Inge over 2 years and her memoir Twilight over Burma, published by the University of Hawaii Press. Bertil Lintner wrote the forward to this book, in which he described Inge with her two infant children going to confront Ne Win and Kitty Ne Win at Schloss Laudon where he was staying while seeing his psychiatrist in Vienna.

As you know, Inge's first husband, a US educated progressive Sawbwa, died, probably of torture, probably in Bahtoo Myo, probably days after the March 2, 1962 coup when he was separated from the other sawbwas who were arrested in Rangoon. Inge and her daughters have never received an explanation.

Mrs. Sargent told me that Ne Win was "angry with Saw Kya Seng, because he did not go down to the junction in the road to greet Ne Win by the roadside" and instead invited him to come to the haw or palace.

She also told me at least twice that "all this had to do with Col. Chit Myaing," then in charge of the Shan States, and "the revenues from the Bawkyo pagoda festivals" which includes income, allowed under the U Nu administration, for gaming tables playing lay khaung kyin, the traditional game with four animal motifs.

Anyway, the notorious previous head of RFA Burmese section (some think he was a junta plant and working then for Military Intelligence chief Khin Nyunt) Soe Thinn

"shot down" parts of my program and made me take out the reference to Chit Myaing.

His point was "Chit Myaing will sue RFA."

My point was "doesn't the victim and her family have Rights too, to state the truth? And it's not libel if it's true."

Soe Thinn still said "but U Chit Myaing won't like it" as if he was (still) working for Chit Myaing or the junta. {I told ST why don’t we play the program to CM on the phone, and if he does not agree we will also broadcast his denial, but ST said he would “call CM from his home phone in the evening.”

Burma Debate at the time also published letters from Inge Sargent and Chit Myaing.

I don't know how this person (Chit Myaing) got US asylum, but it sounds to me like the Nazis, mistakenly admitted.

Soe Thinn as you also know lost his job in 2007 due to RFA having to pay $300,000 in a court settlement for a gender discrimination case. (Soe Thinn asked his trick question, "If I askyou to speak ill of Aung San Suu Kyi,will you do so? The male job applicant sued and won.)

It was all on DC Superior Court website in the public domain including a verbatim account of the trial, but may have been taken off the site now. This was how I found out about it. blockquote>I hope you publish my letter.

KNote--they did not. ________________________________________