One morning in April 1990, a 24-year-old university student using the pseudonym Wunna woke up early and solemnly worshiped in front of a small Buddha statue he kept in his room, acutely aware that he was probably doing so for the last time. When finished praying he stood up, loaded his 38 mm pistol and wedged it under his left arm pit. Then he donned a jacket to cover the weapon and walked out into the streets of Rangoon.

The young student’s intention that day was to assassinate Khin Nyunt, who was then the head of Burma’s military intelligence service (MI) and the third-ranked general in the military junta, which had taken power in a 1988 coup and simultaneously crushed a nationwide pro-democracy uprising.

Khin Nyunt was regarded as the most powerful general in the regime—the one who really called the shots—despite the fact that Snr-Gen Saw Maung and his deputy, then Gen Than Shwe, were officially ranked above him. The spy chief’s intelligence apparatus was notorious for cracking down on pro-democracy activists, who it routinely arrested, tortured and threw into prison, so Wunna believed that killing Khin Nyunt would advance the cause of democracy in Burma and be of great benefit to the country’s oppressed people.

On the day of the intended assassination, Wunna was invited to attend a religious ceremony at the house of a relative of Khin Nyunt. He had been told that the intelligence chief would be present as well, so with the pistol concealed under his jacket on the hot sunny day, Wunna first took a bus and then walked the remaining distance to the ceremony, where his intended victim would be within shooting range.

As he had planned, Wunna arrived before Khin Nyunt and surveyed the house. The crowd attending the ceremony stirred and the hosts bustled about as Khin Nyunt arrived, and when the out-of-uniform MI chief was escorted to a reserved table and served a glass of lemon juice, Wunna found himself standing only eight feet away from his target.

All Wunna needed to do was take out his pistol, aim at Khin Nyunt’s left chest and pull the trigger—the very act he had rehearsed hundreds of times while taking target practice on the Thai-Burma border in hopes of getting close enough to the top general to take a shot. But he knew that the second he assassinated the spy chief, he would in turn be killed by the powerful man’s coterie of bodyguards.

Wunna reminded himself that his mission was for the good of the Burmese people, and although his gut was filled with fear and his body trembling, he desperately tried to gather himself and summon the necessary courage and commitment. At the same time, however, his mind was swimming with thoughts and images of his beloved family and the consequences that would rain down on them after he killed a top brass general.

As Wunna hesitated, Khin Nyunt stood up and walked away. The would-be-assassin had lost his chance and knew he would probably never have another. He realized then and there, however, that even if he did get another shot at the general, he was not professional enough to carry out the job.

He was also not seasoned enough to cover his tracks—after all, he didn’t think he would survive once he pulled the trigger—and a few months later he was arrested by MI. Wunna and two of his colleagues were charged with high treason, given the death sentence and sent to Insein Prison. Then in 1993, his death sentence was reduced to 20 years behind bars.

Wunna was not the only person who attempted to assassinate regime leaders following the 1988 coup and crackdown on pro-democracy activists. Maj Ko Ko Naing of the Karen National Union, an ethnic armed group, exploded bombs at Rangoon’s City Hall and the Thanlyin Oil Refinery on July 7, 1989, the anniversary of the day that late dictator Ne Win ordered the demolition of Rangoon University’s historic student union. Ko Ko Naing was later arrested and sentenced to death after leading a separate assassination team to kill the top military leaders.

Then in early 1990, the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front also plotted to kill top military leaders in an operation named “Hawk,” and the following year ABSDF member Min Han and his colleagues planned once again to do in a separate operation. Both times, however, the conspirators were arrested and sentenced either to death or to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Min Han was released on Oct. 12, when the current Burmese government granted amnesty to certain prisoners and political prisoners.

These attempts to kill top leaders in the aftermath of the 1988 crackdown were not isolated events in Burma. In fact, the assassination and attempted assassination of political leaders—both those that have ruthlessly oppressed the people and those that have been well-respected—is part of the fabric of the country’s modern history.

This began with the murder of Gen Aung San, the leader of Burma’s independence struggle, and his entire cabinet by the henchmen of rival politician U Saw on July 19, 1947, just six months before Burma gained its independence from Great Britain. Then after Gen Ne Win seized power in 1962, Sao Shwe Thaike, the first president of Burma following independence, was killed while being held in detention in an assassination believed to have been carried out by Ne Win’s soldiers.

Ne Win himself was the target of assassination plots and attempts. In 1976, Capt Ohn Kyaw Myint made an attempt to kill the ruthless dictator and other state leaders, but the young military officer was arrested before his plan was carried out and he was later hanged. Afterward, Ne Win became so paranoid that he wore a steel helmet during golf outings for fear of being assassinated, Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Ywe recalled in his book,“From Third World to First.”     

While there were several other assassination plots against Burma’s top military rulers between the time Ne Win took power in 1962 and resigned in 1988, most failed. The highest ranking military officer who was killed during that period was Brig-Gen L-Khun Hpang, an ethnic Kachin and the powerful commander of the Northern Command, who was assassinated in 1985 by the Kachin Independence Army, an ethnic armed group.

Attempts to assassinate the leaders of groups opposing the government were more successful during Ne Win’s reign and beyond. In 1950, Saw Ba U Gyi, the father of the Karen resistance movement and the former minister of revenue under British rule, was killed by government troops in an ambush. In 1968, Thakin Than Tun, a prominent communist leader, was also killed by a government agent in the Pegu Yoma range, where the Communist Party of Burma was based. More recently, in 2008 a leader of the Karen National Union, Mahn Sha, was killed in an operation reportedly led by a KNU splinter group, which is an ally of the government.

Wunna was released from prison in 2008 after spending 19 years behind bars. Now in his mid-40s, he still believes that assassination is a just way to avoid wars and to end people’s suffering, and that a successful assassination of Khin Nyunt would have benefited Burma despite the fact that the MI chief was purged in 2004 on charges of corruption and has been under house arrest ever since.

“Khin Nyunt was the key junta leader at that time. If he had disappeared from the military regime, there was no other general who was cunning and clever enough to continue to rule the country,” said Wunna, adding that the vacuum caused by Khin Nyunt’s disappearance from the junta would have lead to a better political landscape for the opposition groups to negotiate with the weakened regime.  
 
At the time that Wunna embarked on his assassination attempt, Khin Nyunt was secretary 1 of the junta. He was also close to former dictator Ne Win, who still controlled the regime during the early 1990s despite having retired in 1988. Wunna and his colleagues believed that if Khin Nyunt was removed, then Snr-Gen Saw Maung, who had vowed to hand over power after the May 1990 election, would keep his promise.

With Khin Nyunt still in place, however, after Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won the 1990 election by a landslide, the junta did not keep Saw Maung’s promise, and Saw Maung was removed from his position in 1992 and replaced by Than Shwe, who went on to rule the country with an iron fist for almost two decades. When asked to give his perspective on the non-violent approach practiced by Aung San Suu Kyi during that 20-year period, Wunna said he respected Suu Kyi but didn’t think her method was effective.

“Look, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi herself was almost killed at least twice by the military regime’s thugs—in Rangoon in 1996 and in Depayin in 2003,” Wunna said. 

“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her followers have used that non-violent method for the past 20 years, but there are more than 1,000 political prisoners still incarcerated today and except for a handful of the military and government leaders and their cronies, most of Burma’s 50 million people still suffer hardships,” Wunna added. “So if the source of those hardships and problems is gone, the people’s lives will be better off.” 

While admitting that attempts to kill beloved and respected leaders such as Aung San and Mahn Sha have been more successful than plots against the lives of ruthless leaders like Ne Win and Khin Nyunt, Wunna still believes that assassination is the most effective tactic in a war against a dictatorial regime.

In addition, while acknowledging that killing is wrong from a religious standpoint and unlawful from a legal standpoint, he said he would not be deterred from assassinating an oppressive general on these grounds.

“I don’t care if killing is a sin or is unlawful if it brings good to my country,” he said. “But I just couldn’t do it.”