Thura Ma Chit Po (Burmese: သူရ မချစ်ပို; February 1908 – 8 April 1949) was a Burmese woman who was the one and only civilian woman to have received the Thura medal for bravery.[1] She gathered intelligence on the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO) on behalf of the Myanmar Military before she was caught and executed by the KNDO insurgents.[2]
Thura Ma Chit Po | |
|---|---|
ချစ်ပို | |
 | |
| Born | February 1908 Tabodwe 1269 ME |
| Died | 8 April 1949 (aged 41) Friday, 11th waxing of Late Tagu 1310 ME |
| Burial place | Pyin Oo Lwin |
| Citizenship | Myanmar |
| Known for | The only female recipient of the Thura Medal |
| Spouse | Hla Maung |
Biography
editChit Po was born in February 1908 in Tavoy (Dawei), Tenasserim Division.[2] She married Corporal Hla Maung (a cook in No.1 Military Engineer Battalion), in Maymyo (Pyinoolwin) in 1947.[2][3]
Service
editIn 1949, the Myanmar Military (Tatmadaw) was fighting against the insurgent group called Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO).[4]
One of the issues the Tatmadaw had was a lack of access to intelligence.[3] Chit Po, using a variety of disguises, which included a helmet, a cane for herding cows and a sleeping bag, entered the KNDO camp and reported back enemy artillery positions.[3][5]
Shortly afterwards, Chit Po was arrested, interrogated, and killed by the KNDO on 8 April 1949. She was 41 (in her 42nd year). On 16 May 1949, her body was buried in a military ceremony.[2]
Legacy
edit
Chit Po was posthumously awarded the Thura Medal in 1950.[2] She is still the only female recipient of the medal; 516 medals have been awarded to men.[2] Her name is inscribed on the Memorial to the Fallen Heroes (Nay Pyi Taw) in Naypyitaw.[2]
A statue of Chit Po was erected in the Friday Garden in her hometown of Launglon Township, Dawei District, in 2017.[6] The sculptor was Maung Kyaw; the statue is over two metres tall, and shows Chit Po holding a machete and a bag of grenades.[7]
The 110th anniversary of Chit Po's birth was commemorated in Pyin Oo Lwin in February 2018, organised by the Pyin Oo Lwin Township Writers' Association.[2]
Chit Po is the subject of Maymyo Chit Swe's biographical book Thura Ma Phit Po (မြန်မာ့သမိုင်းတွင် တစ်ဦးတည်းသော သူရဘွဲ့ရအမျိုးသမီး သူရမချစ်ပို), first published in 2014.[8] Portrayed by Soe Myat Thuzar in 2017 film Thura Ma Chit Po.[9] In the Hall of Tanintharyi Region, Ma Chit Po is memorialized with a bronze bust.[citation needed]
See also
edit
References
edit- ^ "Amyotha Hluttaw Speaker lays wreath at memorial of Thura Ma Chit Po in PyinOoLwin". Global New Light Of Myanmar. 5 April 2015. Archived from the original on May 15, 2018.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ a b c d e f g h "သူရ မချစ်ပို နှစ် ၁၁၀ ပြည့်ပွဲ ကျင်းပမည်". The Irrawaddy. 7 January 2018.
- ^ a b c Pyin, Lwin (2017-03-07). "မေမြို့က သူရမ ချစ်ပို အကြောင်း". Lwin Pyin News. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
- ^ "Tribal Action Group, Tribal Action Group, indigenous, Hill tribes, Montagnards, Degar, Karen, KNU, Dega KNDO". www.tribalactiongroup.com. Archived from the original on 2019-03-08. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
- ^ Ago, Moeheinin #myanmar • 3 Years (2017-11-03). "ဦးလေးချင်းပြောတဲ့ သူရ မချစ်ပို". Steemit. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ admin (2017-04-27). "သောကြာပြင်ကျေးရွာ သောကြာပြင်ပန်းခြံ၌ သူရမချစ်ပို ရုပ်တုအုတ်မြစ်စီပန္နက်တင်မင်္ဂလာ အခမ်းအနား ကျင်းပ". eTanitharyi. Archived from the original on 2020-08-14. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
- ^ admin (2017-08-10). "သူရမချစ်ပိုရုပ်တု ဇာတိတွင် လှည့်လည်". Dawei Watch / The Voice of Minorities. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
- ^ "မြန်မာ့သမိုင်းတွင် တစ်ဦးတည်းသော သူရဘွဲ့ရအမျိုးသမီး သူရမချစ်ပို". Myanmarbookshop.
- ^ "အမျိုးသမီး သူရဲကောင်း သူရမချစ်ပို အကြောင်း ဇာတ်ကားရိုက်ကူး". Myanmarload. Retrieved 2023-01-05.