Min Maw Kun (Burmese: မင်းမော်ကွန်း, born Kyaw Kyaw Htay Lwin, 26 February 1979) is a former Burmese actor, singer, and revolutionary. He received the Myanmar Academy Awards for Best Actor in 2001 for his performance in Good Hearted-Stupid Person.[1] [2] Throughout his career, he has acted in more than 150 films.[3][4]

Min Maw Kun
မင်းမော်ကွန်း
Born
Kyaw Kyaw Htay Lwin

(1979-02-26) 26 February 1979 (age 45)
NationalityBurmese
Occupation(s)Actor, model, singer
Years active1996–2021
Height5 ft 6 in (168 cm)
SpouseThinzar Hlaing
Children3
Parent(s)Zin Wine
Khin Nwe Nwe Tun
AwardsMyanmar Academy Award (Best Lead Actor for 2001)

In the aftermath of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, he retired from his acting career and became a vocal critic of Myanmar's ruling military junta. His active involvement in anti-coup protests resulted in an arrest warrant being issued against him, leading him to flee to the jungle. There, he joined the People's Defence Force and became a revolutionary.[5]

Early life

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Min Maw Kun was born on 26 February 1979 in Yangon to Zin Wine and Khin Nwe Nwe Tun.

Career

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At the age of 5, he began starring as a child actor in films under the name Chan Myae and became a lead actor by 17. His first film was A Yaite. He also achieved success in his singing career with the music group Myaypeyo. Additionally, he was a member of the Burmese traditional anyeint troupe, Htawara Hninzi. Established in 2007, the troupe has hosted many charity fundraisers over the past 15 years.[6]

Political activities

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Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Min Maw Kun was active in the anti-coup movement both in person at rallies and through social media.[7][8][9] Denouncing the military coup, he has taken part in protests since February. He joined the "We Want Justice" three-finger salute movement. The movement was launched on social media, and many celebrities have joined the movement.[10]

On 2 April 2021, warrants for his arrest were issued under section 505 (a) of the Myanmar Penal Code by the State Administration Council for speaking out against the military coup. Along with several other celebrities, he was charged with calling for participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and damaging the state's ability to govern, with supporting the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, and with generally inciting the people to disturb the peace and stability of the nation.[11][12][13][14][15]

Within hours of the announcement that the newly appointed chairman of the Myanmar Motion Picture Organisation under the military council would take over, actor Min Maw Kun resigned as a member. He also left from the Htawara Hninzi.[16][17][18] He fled to the jungle and a remote area controlled by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) before relocating to a Karen National Union (KNU)-controlled area. Later, he joined the People's Defence Force and became a soldier. Alongside others, he co-founded the D-Day Channel, a broadcasting platform focusing on revolutionary topics such as safety measures and weapon handling.[19]

On 28 August 2022, his homes and business property were confiscated by the military council.[20] He is active on his Facebook profile named Kyaw Kyaw Htay Lwin, where he criticizes the anti-junta stance and argues for boycotts on military-linked celebrities. He often scolds nationals who are not interested in politics and do not support the revolution. He is nicknamed "the people's brother". When he scolds people, netizens frankly say, "ကိုကျော် ဆူပြီ" (Ko Kyaw scolded).[21]

On July 30, 2022, he relocated to Australia as a political refugee.[19] With his acting career on hiatus, he is dedicated to advocating for change by actively participating in protests and engaging with members of parliament. He is now a fundraiser for the National Unity Government and the People's Defense Force. Reflecting on his journey, he expressed,[19]

"I was once famous and successful, but I have nothing left now. Do I regret anything or feel sad? Not one bit... When I hear about people being arrested, killed, executed, or their homes being burned down, it fills me with anger. However, I believe I have grown more mature. I never imagined I would become a rebel in the jungle or move to another country."

On June 30, 2024, Min Maw Kun held a fundraising event titled "Artistic Weapons for the Revolution" at the community center in Osaka, Japan. Burmese people residing in Japan attended the event in full force.[22]

Personal life

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Min Maw Kun is married to Thinzar Hlaing, and they have two sons named Min Myat and Aeka Phone Myat, as well as one daughter named Laypyay Thway.[23]

Awards and nominations

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Year Award Category Nominated work Result
1997 Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards Best Actor in a Leading Role The Shadow Nominated
2001 Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards Best Actor in a Leading Role Good Hearted-Stupid Person Won
2003 Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards Best Actor in a Leading Role Value Of Mother's Milk Nominated
2003 Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards Best Actor in a Supporting Role Moon That Born From Sun Nominated
2017 Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards Best Actor in a Supporting Role The Unfolded Umbrella Nominated

References

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  1. ^ သားနဲ့ သမီးလေးအတွက် စိတ်ပူနေတဲ့ မင်းမော်ကွန်း
  2. ^ သမီးဖြစ်သူ လေပြေသွေးရဲ့ အနုပညာဝါသနာကို ပံ့ပိုးပေးမယ့် မင်းမော်ကွန်း
  3. ^ မင်းမော်ကွန်း
  4. ^ Weekiy Eleven Journal (1.7.2009)
  5. ^ ""မင်းမော်ကွန်း ပေါင် ကျည်ထိမှန်" ဆိုတဲ့သတင်း အမှားဖြစ်ကြောင်း ပြန်ဖြေရှင်း". The Irrawaddy.
  6. ^ "ဧရာဝတီ သတင်းဌာန ၂၅ နှစ်မြောက်အတွက် နှင်းဆီအဖွဲ့သားများ၏ ဆုတောင်းစကားမျာ". The Irrawaddy.
  7. ^ "နာမည်ကျော် ရုပ်ရှင်သရုပ်ဆောင်များက စစ်အာဏာရှင်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်ဆန္ဒပြ". DVB (in Burmese). 28 February 2021.
  8. ^ "CDM မှာ ပူးပေါင်းကြဖို့ မေတ္တာရပ်ခံလိုက်တဲ့ မင်းမော်ကွန်း". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 2 March 2021.
  9. ^ "ဖမ်းဆီးထားသူတွေကို အမြန်ဆုံး ပြန်လွှတ်ပေးဖို့ မင်းမော်ကွန်း တောင်းဆို". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 4 March 2021.
  10. ^ ""အာဏာရှင်စနစ်ကို ပြတ်ပြတ်သားသား တော်လှန်ပါတယ်"လို့ မင်းမော်ကွန်း ဆို". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 15 February 2021.
  11. ^ "Warrants issued for artists, entertainers that called for CDM participation". Eleven. 3 April 2021.
  12. ^ "စစ်ကောင်စီကိုဆန့်ကျင်တဲ့ အနုပညာရှင်တွေကို ဆက်တိုက်အမှုဖွင့်နေ". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). 3 April 2021.
  13. ^ "CDM လႈပ္ရွားသူ အႏုပညာရွင္ေတြကုိ အာဏာပုိင္ေတြ အေရးယူဖုိ႔ေၾကညာ". VOA (in Burmese). 4 August 2021.
  14. ^ "မင်းမော်ကွန်း၊ အိန္ဒြာကျော်ဇင်၊ Rဇာနည်နှင့် ပိုင်ဖြိုးသု အပါအဝင် အယောက် ၂၀ ကို အမှုဖွင့်". DVB (in Burmese). 3 April 2021.
  15. ^ "CDM မှာ ပူးပေါင်းကြဖို့ မေတ္တာရပ်ခံလိုက်တဲ့ မင်းမော်ကွန်း". The Irrawaddy.
  16. ^ "သရုပ်ဆောင် ခန့်စည်သူ ရုပ်ရှင်အစည်းအရုံးဥက္ကဋ္ဌ တာဝန်ယူပြီးနောက် နုတ်ထွက်သည့် အနုပညာရှင် ၁၀ ဦးနီးပါး ရှိလာ". NP News.
  17. ^ "တော်လှန်ရေးမင်းသား အကယ်ဒမီ မင်းမော်ကွန်း နှင်းဆီအငြိမ့်အဖွဲ့မှ နုတ်ထွက်". DVB.
  18. ^ ""အာဏာရှင်လက်ထက်မှာ အနုပညာအလုပ် အားလုံးကို CDM ပဲ"လို့ မင်းမော်ကွန်း ဆို". The Irrawaddy.
  19. ^ a b c "Min Maw Kun was a leading actor in Myanmar. Now he's fighting military rule from Australia". SBS Language. Retrieved 25 September 2023.
  20. ^ "သရုပ်ဆောင် မင်းမော်ကွန်းနေအိမ်ကို စစ်ကောင်စီ ချိပ်ပိတ်". RFA (in Burmese).
  21. ^ "မင်းမော်ကွန်းရဲ့သတိပေး Comment ကြောင့် Live လွှင့် ဈေးရောင်းနေမှုကို ခင်လှိုင်တို့အဖွဲ့ ချက်ချင်းရပ်ကာ ဖြုတ်ချခဲ့ရ". NP News (in Burmese).
  22. ^ "အကယ်ဒမီ မင်းမော်ကွန်း၏ အိုဆာကာမြို့ ဖျော်ဖြေပွဲ ရုံပြည့်လျှံအားပေး (ဓာတ်ပုံ)". DVB.
  23. ^ "ဟာသဇာတ်ကားတွေ မရိုက်ဖြစ်တော့ဘူးဆိုတဲ့ မင်းမော်ကွန်း". Duwun. 6 September 2019.
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