Bo Aung Kyaw Day

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On 20 December 1938, Bo Aung Kyaw was killed during a mounted police charge by the British Indian Imperial Police during the third Rangoon University student boycott. Bo Aung Kyaw Day (20 December) commemorates him as the first student leader who died in the independence struggle of Myanmar.[1][2]

In December 1938, striking workers from the Chauk and Yenangyaung oilfields of the Burmah Oil Company marched to Rangoon to meet the British authorities. When the strikers reached Rangoon, they joined up with Rangoon University students who were staging their third annual protest against colonial rule. The demonstration, which blocked access to the Secretariat, the seat of the colonial government, was broken up by the Indian Imperial Police. Many students, including Kyi Maung and Aung Kyaw, received serious injuries, and the latter later succumbed to a head injury received from a police baton. Aung Kyaw was posthumously conferred the title Bo (leader) by the students.

References[edit]

  1. ^ Stahr, E. (2002). Australia's Burmese. The Author. p. 23. Retrieved 9 July 2018. Dec. 20- commemorating the death of Bo Aung Kyaw, the first student to die Fighting the British in 1920.
  2. ^ Tiwary, S.S. (2008). Encyclopaedia of Southeast Asian dynasties. Encyclopaedia of Southeast Asian Dynasties. Anmol Publications. p. 59. ISBN 9788126137244. Retrieved 9 July 2018. The movement became known as Htaung thoun ya byei ayeidawbon (the '1300 Revolution' named after the Burmese calendar year), and December 20, the day the first martyr Aung Kyaw fell, commemorated by students as 'Bo Aung Kyaw Day ...