Former woman leader of Shans joins late husband

Former woman leader of Shans joins late husband

Sao Hearn Kham, Burma's first First Lady (1948 - 51), passed away in exile at her home in Canada last evening (17 January) at 18:30 (09:00 Rangoon time today). She was 86. 

Sao Hearn Kham, known as "Sao Mae" (Royal Mother) or Mahadevi, was the daughter of one of the famous Shan warrior princes, Khun Sang Tonhoong. She was married to Sao Shwe Thaike, Prince of Yawnghwe, who became the first president of Burma and died under what was described as mysterious circumstances during detention following Gen Ne Win's coup in 1962. 

She also served as a member of Parliament from 1956 - 1960. After Sao Shwe Thaike's death, she joined the resistance and was elected as president of the Shan State War Council, the office she held until 1969 when she went into exile in Canada. 

She is survived by her sons Tiger, Chao Tzang and Harn, and her daughters Sao Ying Sita and Sao Ying Hseng Leun. Another son, Mee Mee, was killed during the 'bloodless coup'.

The Mahadevi is immortalized in The White Umbrella, "the story of Burma as she lived it," according to author Patricia Elliot.

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Another Shan princess, Chao Suganta na Chiangmai, a scion of Kengtung, also passed away at the age of 93, on 15 January. She was cremated on 19 January.

She was born on 31 January 1910 in Kengtung, the second daughter of Chao Kawnkeo Inthaleng, then ruling prince of the largest principality in Federated Shan States. She married Chao Inthanont na Chiangmai in 1933 and had lived in Thailand since.

She was dubbed "the love bond between Chiangmai and Kengtung (Chiangtung in Thai) courts" by Thai academic Somchote Ongsakul of Chiangmai University. Both cities were founded by Phrya Mengrai of Chiangsaen in the 13th century.

South China Morning Post - Thursday, January 30, 2003

Touch of nobility dies with a Shan princess 

WILLIAM BARNES in Bangkok

The former first lady of Burma, who was cremated at the weekend, started life as a Shan princess. Sao Hearn Hkam was sold into marriage to become the minor wife of a local princeling. 

Through tremendous force of personality she vaulted into the position of chief wife to her older husband. Later, she was his tough, charming, outspoken first lady when Prince Shwe Thaike was president. "I didn't come here to be your concubine," she firmly told her prince soon after their marriage, when she decided that she would sit beside him on his throne. 

"She was the strongest and most fearless woman I have ever known, but then she had to be," said Patricia Elliot, her biographer. 

Sao Hearn Hkam, who was 87 when she died, possessed some of the old decency that permitted some people to hope that the country, now known as Myanmar, would somehow finesse a successful society after independence from Britain in 1947. 

Last weekend's funeral was a relatively humble affair in a distant land - but how much better and honourable it was than coup leader Ne Win's hasty and unmourned passing late last year. 

Sao Hearn Hkam was one of a generation or two of Shan noblewomen who were able to punch above their weight because, through marriage, they made themselves linchpins in the often prickly relations between a myriad of old Shan principalities. 

Most of them were relatively well educated, and they seized any opportunity open to them. 

Given that they emerged from a feudal society of multiple wives, violent family quarrels and inequality, a surprising number showed themselves to be worldly, straightforward and sensible. 

It is no coincidence that her surviving sons Tiger, Chao-tzang and Harn, together with Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero Aung San, have helped broker dialogue with the ruling military junta. 

The coup that overthrew a chaotic civilian government in 1962 saw Sao Hearn Hkam's husband taken into military custody, never to reappear. Her youngest son Myee Yawnghee - executed in the first hours of the takeover - may have been the first victim of the new military dictatorship. Sao Hearn Hkam escaped with little more than the clothes on her back to Thailand, where she went on to lead a Shan resistance group. 

Her final years were spent cooking Myanmarese curries in a little flat in a "senior citizens"' high-rise in Canada. 

Her biographer, Elliot, said: "General Ne Win's coup interrupted a conversation [between the majority Myanmarese and the ethnic minorities]. It was not all sweetness and light when she and her contemporaries were running the show - but at least most of them were trying to sort it all out in a constitutional fashion." 

She added: "Hope never died for her. She always wanted to go back - and she could have - but she refused because she feared the regime would use her return for propaganda. It was very painful for her." 

Prince Shwe Thaike shared a vision, with Aung San, of participatory democracy and respect for the aspirations of other races. But Sao Hearn Hkam was able to say things frankly that her husband could not or would not. For example, she did not see her first ethnic Burmese until she was six years and firmly believed until her dying breath that the Shan needed and deserved autonomy. 

Aung San was assassinated by a rival for power six months before independence, leaving a void that has never been satisfactorily filled.