Soe Win (Burmese: စိုးဝင်း; 1961 – 25 July 2020), also known as U Soe, was the bodyguard and close confidant of the State Counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi.[1] He has served Aung Sann Suu Kyi since the early days of her democracy movement until she transitioned to lead the current government. Soe Win served as Aung San Suu Kyi's bodyguard on the 2010 and 2015 general election campaigns. Due to his outstanding character and loyalty, Aung San Suu Kyi even asked if he could be made an honorary member of parliament, but he refused.[2] He has been regarded as a trusted ally of Aung San Suu Kyi's and dubbed as her "right-hand-person" by many.[3][4]

Soe Win
Soe Win in 2012
Born1961 (1961)
Yangon, Myanmar
DiedJuly 25, 2020(2020-07-25) (aged 58–59)
Resting placeYayway Cemetery, Yangon
NationalityBurmese
Occupation(s)Bodyguard, close confidant of Aung San Suu Kyi
SpouseMyint Myint Thein

Biography

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Soe Win (R), is seen with Aung San Suu Kyi at NLD headquarter on 23 May 2011 in Yangon, Myanmar.

Before becoming a security guard he was a taxi driver and, though keeping a low profile over the years. He had protected Aung San Suu Kyi for some 30 years, committing himself to working with the NLD in 1990. In 1995, he became a member of the Three Colors.[5][6] He was always seen by her side, chaperoning and protecting her from crowds and possible security threats. He died at age 59 of a heart attack on 25 July 2020.[7] His funeral held on 29 July at Yayway Cemetery. His final journey was accompanied by government officials, political colleagues and hundreds of people.[3][8]

References

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  1. ^ "သစ္စာစောင့်သိမှုကို အသံတိတ်ဖော်ညွှန်းခဲ့သူ ဦးစိုးဝင်း". Myanmar NOW (in Burmese). 29 July 2020.
  2. ^ "The last trip of a loyal guard". The Myanmar Times. 31 July 2020.
  3. ^ a b "Final journey of The Lady's bodyguard, U Soe Win". The Myanmar Times. 30 July 2020.
  4. ^ "ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်၏ သစ္စာရှိ သက်တော်စောင့်". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 28 July 2020.
  5. ^ "ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်၏ သက်တော်စောင့်အဖြစ်ဆောင်ရွက်ခဲ့သူ ဦးစိုးဝင်း ကွယ်လွန်". Mizzima (in Burmese). 25 July 2020.
  6. ^ "သုံးရောင်ခြယ် ၂၈ နှစ်မြောက် အခမ်းအနားကျင်းပ". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). 26 August 2016.
  7. ^ "Myanmar State Counsellor's bodyguard U Soe Win passes away". The Myanmar Times. 26 July 2020.
  8. ^ "သစ္စာရှိ သက်တော်စောင့် ဦးစိုးရဲ့ နောက်ဆုံးခရီး". Mizzima (in Burmese). 29 July 2020.