Centenary of former UN Secretary-General U Thant's Birth22 Jan 1909 - 22 Jan 2009ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ လူျဖစ္လာရတဲ့ဘ၀မွာ ေက်နပ္ဂုဏ္ယူမိတဲ့ အခ်က္ အနည္းငယ္ ရိွပါတယ္။ ယဥ္ေက်းမွဳ အေမြအႏွစ္ေတြ အခိုင္အမာ ျပလို႕ရခဲ့တဲ့ ေရွးေဟာင္းပုဂံနယ္ေျမ၊ ေစတီပုထိုး ဘုရားေက်ာင္းကန္ စံုလင္လွတဲ့ ဗုဒၶသာသနာ ထြန္းကားမွဳေတြ၊ ရဲရင့္ျပတ္သားၿပီး ကိုယ္က်ိဳးစြန္႕ခဲ့တဲ့ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္းလို အာဇာနည္ အမ်ိဳးသားေခါင္းေဆာင္ႀကီးေတြ စသည္ စသည္ျဖင့္ေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အဲဒီအထဲမွာ ကုလသမဂၢ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့ဖူးတဲ့ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသား ဦးသန္႕လည္း တစ္ေယာက္ အပါအ၀င္ေပါ့။
ေျပာမယ့္သာ ေျပာတာပါ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ဦးသန္႕ဆိုတဲ့ လူတစ္ေယာက္အေၾကာင္းကို စတင္ သိခဲ့တာ ၁၉၉၈ ခုႏွစ္ ေက်ာ္မွာပါ။ အဲဒီအခ်ိန္အေရွ႕ပိုင္း ဦးသန္႕ဆိုတာ တစ္ခါမွ မၾကားဖူးသလို ၾကားမိရင္ေတာင္ ဘာမွန္းဆုိတာ သိမွာမဟုတ္ပါ။ ၁၀ တန္းအထိ ဖတ္မွတ္ခဲ့ရတဲ့ ေက်ာင္းသင္ခန္းစာ သမိုင္းစာအုပ္ေတြမွာလည္း ဦးသန္႕ဆိုတာ ရွာမေတြ႕ခဲ့ပါဘူး။ အာဇာနည္ေန႕လို ပြဲမ်ိဳးေတြမွာ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ဆန္းအေၾကာင္း ေဟာေျပာတဲ့သူ ရိွေပမယ့္ ဦးသန္႕အေၾကာင္း တစ္ခါမွ မေျပာၾကပါဘူး။ ဒီလိုနဲ႕ ဦးသန္႕တစ္ေယာက္ ျပည္ဖံုးကားခ်ခံထားရပါတယ္။
ဒီလိုနဲ႕ တစ္ရက္... ညီ၀မ္းကြဲတစ္ေယာက္နဲ႕ ပန္းဆိုးတန္းလမ္းက စာအုပ္ဆိုင္ေတြကို ဟိုဟိုဒီဒီ ေမႊေႏွာက္ရင္း တကၠသိုလ္စိန္တင္ ေရးတဲ့ ဦးသန္႕ရဲ႕ အထုပတၱိစာအုပ္ကို ေတြ႕မိပါတယ္။ စာအုပ္ေစ်းကလည္း အဲဒီေခတ္ အခ်ိန္အခါမွာလည္း မနည္းမေႏွာပါပဲ။ ေသခ်ာတာတစ္ခုက အဲဒီအခ်ိန္မွာ အဲဒီစာအုပ္ကို ၀ယ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ ေငြအင္အား ကၽြန္ေတာ့္လက္ထဲမွာ လံုး၀ မရိွခဲ့ပါဘူး။ ညီ၀မ္းကြဲကေတာ့ ဂ်ပန္ေရာက္ သူ႕ဦးေလးေတြ အေဒၚေတြ လႊဲေပးတဲ့ မုန္႕ဖိုးေတြေၾကာင့္ သူကေတာ့ ေအးေဆး ၀ယ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ အေနအထားပါပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အဲဒီအခ်ိန္မွာ သူက အသက္လည္း ငယ္ေသးေတာ့ စာဖတ္ ၀ါသနာမပါရွာဘူး။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္နဲ႕တာ အတူ ပါလာတာ ဘာမွ ၀ယ္ခ်င္စိတ္ရိွတဲ့ပံု မေပၚဘူး။ ေနာက္ဆံုးေတာ့ ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ရဲ႕ ေျပာဆို စည္းရံုးမွဳနဲ႕ပဲ သူ အဲဒီစာအုပ္ကို ၀ယ္ခဲ့လိုက္ပါတယ္။ ၀ယ္ၿပီးတာနဲ႕ အဲဒီစာအုပ္က သူ႕အိမ္မွာ တစ္ပတ္ေလာက္ပဲ ၾကာၿပီး ကၽြန္ေတာ့္လက္ထဲ ေရာက္ေနတာ အခုခ်ိန္ထိပါပဲ။ ၁၉၉၈ ကေန တြက္ၾကည္႕ရင္ ၁၁ ႏွစ္ေတာင္ ရိွၿပီပဲ။
အဲဒီစာအုပ္ရဲ႕ ေက်းဇူးနဲ႕ ဂုဏ္ယူစရာ ေကာင္းေလာက္တဲ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသားတစ္ေယာက္ အေၾကာင္း သိရိွခြင့္ ရခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ကုလသမဂၢ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္ ျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ ပထမဦးဆံုးေသာ အာရွသားတိုက္သားဟာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ရဲ႕ ေမြးရပ္ေျမျဖစ္တဲ့ ျမန္မာျပည္သားဆိုတာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ အသိေနာက္က်ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီေလာက္ ႀကီးက်ယ္ခမ္းနားတဲ့ ဂုဏ္ယူဖြယ္ရာႀကီးတစ္ခု သမိုင္းမွာ အထင္ကရ ရိွေနခဲ့တာကို ႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ အေမွာင္ခ်ထားခဲ့တဲ့ ရူးသြပ္ မိုက္မဲမွဳကိုလည္း အ့ံအားသင့္ခဲ့မိပါတယ္။ ဘယ္သူေတြ ဘယ္လိုပဲ ႀကိဳးစား ေဖ်ာက္ဖ်က္ပါေစ... ဦးသန္႕ဟာ ကမာၻ႕သမိုင္း ျမန္မာ့သမိုင္းမွာ ထာ၀စဥ္ လင္းလက္ေနမယ့္ မီးရွဴးတန္ေဆာင္ တစ္ခုပါပဲဗ်ာ။
ေၾသာ္... အခုဆို ဦးသန္႕ေမြးေန႕ ႏွစ္တစ္ရာေတာင္ ျပည္႕ခဲ့ၿပီပဲ။
ယာယီ ကုလသမဂၢ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္အျဖစ္ က်မ္းသစၥာ က်ိန္ဆိုေနစဥ္...
U Thant, who served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971, was chosen to head the world body when Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was killed in an air crash in September 1961.
U Thant was born at Pantanaw, Burma, on 22 January 1909, and was educated at the National High School in Pantanaw and at University College, Rangoon.
Prior to his diplomatic career, U Thant's experience was in education and information work. He served as Senior Master at the National High School, which he had attended in Pantanaw, and in 1931, he became Headmaster after winning first place in the Anglo-Vernacular Secondary Teachership Examination.
He was a member of Burma's Textbook Committee and of the Council of National Education before World War II, and was an Executive Committee member of the Heads of Schools Association. He was also active as a free-lance journalist.
In 1942, U Thant served for a few months as Secretary of Burma's Education Reorganization Committee. In the following year, he returned to the National High School as Headmaster for another four years.
U Thant was appointed Press Director of the Government of Burma in 1947. In 1948, he became Director of Broadcasting, and in the following year, he was appointed Secretary to the Government of Burma in the Ministry of Information. In 1953, U Thant became Secretary for projects in the Office of the Prime Minister, and in 1955, he was assigned additional duties as Executive Secretary of Burma's Economic and Social Board.
At the time of his appointment as Acting Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant had been Permanent Representative of Burma to the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador (1957-1961).
During his diplomatic career, U Thant served on several occasions as Adviser to Prime Ministers of Burma.
U Thant began serving as Acting Secretary-General since 3 November 1961, when he was unanimously appointed by the General Assembly, on the recommendation of the Security Council, to fill the unexpired term of the late Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold. He was then unanimously appointed Secretary-General by the General Assembly on 30 November 1962 for a term of office ending on 3 November 1966.
U Thant was re-appointed for a second term as Secretary-General of the United Nations by the General Assembly on 2 December 1966 on the unanimous recommendation of the Security Council (resolution 229, 1966).
U Thant retired at the end of his second term in 1971 and he died on 25 November 1974 after a long illness. He was 65 years old.
Credit : UNIC
