Min Aung Hlaing

Military ruler of Myanmar since 2021

Min Aung Hlaing (Burmese: မင်းအောင်လှိုင်; born 3 July 1956) is a Burmese army general. He became the 13th Prime Minister of Myanmar in 2021.[1] He appointed himself as the Chairman of the State Administration Council since 2 February 2021.[1] He has been accused of corruption many times during his military career.[2]


Min Aung Hlaing
မင်းအောင်လှိုင်
Min Aung Hlaing in 2021
13th Prime Minister of Myanmar
Assumed office
1 August 2021
PresidentMyint Swe (acting)
DeputySoe Win
Preceded byHimself
(as Chairman of SAC)
Chairman of the State Administration Council
Assumed office
2 February 2021
PresidentMyint Swe (acting)
Preceded byAung San Suu Kyi
(as State Counsellor)
Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services
Assumed office
30 March 2011
PresidentThein Sein
Htin Kyaw
Win Myint
Myint Swe (acting)
DeputySoe Win
State CounsellorAung San Suu Kyi
Preceded byThan Shwe
Personal details
Born (1956-07-03) 3 July 1956 (age 68)
Tavoy, Burma
(now Dawei, Myanmar)
NationalityBurmese
Spouse(s)Kyu Kyu Hla
ChildrenMultiple, including:
Aung Pyae Sone
Khin Thiri Thet Mon
Alma materRangoon Arts and Sciences University (LL.B)
Defence Services Academy
AwardsMaha Thray Sithu
Honorary Malaysian Armed Forces Order for Valour (First Degree)
Gallant Commander of Malaysian Armed Forces
Knight Grand Cross First Class of the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant of Thailand
Websitewww.seniorgeneralminaunghlaing.com.mm
Military service
Allegiance Myanmar
Branch/service Myanmar Army
Years of service1974–present
Rank Senior General
CommandsCommander-in-Chief of the Tatmadaw
Joint Chief of Staff
Chief of Bureau of Special Operations-2 (BSO-2)

In February 2021, he removed the elected government led by de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi from power[3] in a coup d'état on 1 February 2021.[4][5]

He was Joint Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Defence from 2010 to 2011. He is also a member of the National Defence and Security Council (NDSC) chaired by the president of Myanmar.[6] He was promoted to four-star General in 2011 and five-star General in 2013.

2020 election

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In November 2020, Min Aung Hlaing questioned if the results of the 2020 election were reliable.[7] On 5 November, his military rank was promoted to be equal to that of Vice President of Myanmar.[8] After voting in the 2020 election, Min Aung Hlaing said he would accept the election results.[9] He lost the election and called the election a fraud.

On 27 January 2021, Min Aung Hlaing said he was thinking about a coup d'état and remove the Constitution, if allegations of voter fraud during last year’s election were not investigated.[10] These comments sparked concern about another potential coup in the country.[11] The next day, the Union Election Commission said there was no claims to voter fraud.[12] On 29 January, the military said they would protest the election results.[13]

2021 military coup and national's ruler

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On 1 February, Min Aung Hlaing led the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, one day before the democratically-elected members of parliament were scheduled to be sworn in as members of the Assembly of the Union. The following day, he created the State Administration Council as the country's interim ruling body.[14] He also removed Aung San Suu Kyi from power and made himself State Leader of Myanmar.[15]

Six months after the coup, on 1 August 2021, Min Aung Hlaing replaced SAC with a caretaker government and established himself as the country's prime minister.[16][17][18] However, he has not been recognized by the international community as legal leader of the country.

On November 27, 2024, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court filed a request for an arrest warrant against Min Aung Hlaing for alleged crimes against humanity.[19]

Personal life

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Min Aung Hlaing is married to Kyu Kyu Hla, a retired lecturer.[20][21] He has 3 children, including son Aung Pyae Sone and daughter Khin Thiri Thet Mon.

References

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  1. 1.0 1.1 "Myanmar Junta Forms Caretaker Government; Min Aung Hlaing is Prime Minister". VOA. 1 August 2021.
  2. "Systemic Conflict of Interest in Myanmar Military Allows for Serious Corruption". Justice For Myanmar. 17 June 2020. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
  3. "Myanmar coup: Aung San Suu Kyi detained as military seizes control". BBC News. 1 February 2021.
  4. "အရေးပေါ်ကာလ ဆောင်ရွက်ပြီးစီးပါက ရွေးကောက်ပွဲ ပြန်လည်ကျင်းပ၍ အနိုင်ရပါတီအား နိုင်ငံတော်တာဝန်ကို လွှဲအပ်ပေးနိုင်ရေး ဆောင်ရွက်မည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း တပ်မတော်ထုတ်ပြန်". 7 Day Daily (in Burmese). 1 February 2021.
  5. "Myanmar military seizes power, detains elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi". Reuters. Archived from the original on 1 February 2021. Retrieved 1 February 2021.
  6. "Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008)" (PDF). Burma Library. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 August 2019. Retrieved 3 July 2019.
  7. "Min Aung Hlaing's election remarks violate law, says President's Office". Myanmar NOW. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  8. "ဗိုလ်ချုပ်မှူးကြီးမင်းအောင်လှိုင်သည် ဒုတိယသမ္မတအဆင့်ရှိသူဟု တပ်မတော်ထုတ်ပြန်". The Myanmar Times (in Burmese). 5 November 2020. Archived from the original on 13 November 2020. Retrieved 1 February 2021.
  9. "Military chief Min Aung Hlaing vows to accept election results after public spat with government". Myanmar NOW. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  10. "Commander-in-chief says 'constitution can be repealed'". Myanmar NOW. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  11. "Tatmadaw chief's rhetoric fuels fears of a coup". Frontier Myanmar. 2021-01-29. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  12. "Myanmar Election Authority Rejects Military Claims of Election Fraud". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  13. Naing, Shoon (2021-01-30). "Myanmar military allays coup fears, says it will protect constitution". Reuters. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  14. "ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် တပ်မတော်ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်ရုံး အမိန့်အမှတ်(၉/၂၀၂၁) ၁၃၈၂ ခုနှစ်၊ ပြာသိုလပြည့်ကျော် ၆ ရက် ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ ၂ ရက်". Tatmadaw Information Team (in Burmese). Archived from the original on 3 February 2021. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  15. "Myanmar military announces new State Administration Council". The Myanmar Times. 2 February 2021. Archived from the original on 3 February 2021. Retrieved 2 February 2021.
  16. "Myanmar military leader takes new title of prime minister in caretaker government - state media". Reuters. 1 August 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
  17. "Myanmar army ruler takes prime minister role, again pledges elections". Reuters. 1 August 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
  18. Beech, Hannah (1 August 2021). "Top Myanmar General Says Military Rule Will Continue Into 2023". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
  19. "ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrant for Myanmar military leader over Rohingya campaign". Reuters. 27 November 2024. Retrieved 27 November 2024.
  20. "တပ်မတော် ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ် ယာဘက် လက်သူကြွယ် ခွဲစိတ်မှုအောင်မြင်". Lotaya (in Burmese). Archived from the original on 2021-02-21. Retrieved 2021-02-03.
  21. "Commander-in-chief of Myanmar Defence Forces visits Eastern Naval Command". The Economic Times. Archived from the original on 1 February 2021. Retrieved 11 January 2021.