Chit Po

Thura Ma Chit Po (Burmese: သူရ မချစ်ပို; February 1908 – 8 April 1949) was a Burmese woman who was the one and only civilian woman to have received the Thura medal for bravery.[1] She gathered intelligence on the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO) on behalf of the Myanmar Military before she was caught and executed by the KNDO insurgents.[2]

In this Burmese name, Ma is an honorific, not a given name.
Thura Ma

Chit Po
ချစ်ပို
BornFebruary 1908
Tabodwe 1269 ME
Tavoy, Tenasserim Division, British Burma
Died8 April 1949(1949-04-08) (aged 41)
Friday, 11th waxing of Late Tagu 1310 ME
Pyin Oo Lwin
Burma
Burial placePyin Oo Lwin
CitizenshipMyanmar
Known forThe only female recipient of the Thura Medal
SpouseHla Maung

Biography

Chit Po was born in February 1908 in Tavoy (Dawei), Tenasserim Division.[2] She married Corporal Hla Maung (a cook in No.1 Military Engineer Battalion), in Maymyo (Pyinoolwin) in 1947.[2][3]

Service

In 1949, the Myanmar Military (Tatmadaw) was fighting against the insurgent group called Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO).[4]

One of the issues the Tatmadaw had was a lack of access to intelligence.[3] Chit Po, using a variety of disguises, which included a helmet, a cane for herding cows and a sleeping bag, entered the KNDO camp and reported back enemy artillery positions.[3][5]

Shortly afterwards, Chit Po was arrested, interrogated, and killed by the KNDO on 8 April 1949. She was 41 (in her 42nd year). On 16 May 1949, her body was buried in a military ceremony.[2]

Legacy
Thura Ma Chit Po's Grave

Chit Po was posthumously awarded the Thura Medal in 1950.[2] She is still the only female recipient of the medal; 516 medals have been awarded to men.[2] Her name is inscribed on the Memorial to the Fallen Heroes (Nay Pyi Taw) in Naypyitaw.[2]

A statue of Chit Po was erected in the Friday Garden in her hometown of Launglon Township, Dawei District, in 2017.[6] The sculptor was Maung Kyaw; the statue is over two metres tall, and shows Chit Po holding a machete and a bag of grenades.[7]

The 110th anniversary of Chit Po's birth was commemorated in Pyin Oo Lwin in February 2018, organised by the Pyin Oo Lwin Township Writers' Association.[2]

Chit Po is the subject of Maymyo Chit Swe's biographical book Thura Ma Phit Po (မြန်မာ့သမိုင်းတွင် တစ်ဦးတည်းသော သူရဘွဲ့ရအမျိုးသမီး သူရမချစ်ပို), first published in 2014.[8] Portrayed by Soe Myat Thuzar in 2017 film Thura Ma Chit Po.[9] In the Hall of Tanintharyi Region, Ma Chit Po is memorialized with a bronze bust.

See also

References
  1. "Amyotha Hluttaw Speaker lays wreath at memorial of Thura Ma Chit Po in PyinOoLwin". Global New Light Of Myanmar. 5 April 2015. Archived from the original on May 15, 2018.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  2. "သူရ မချစ်ပို နှစ် ၁၁၀ ပြည့်ပွဲ ကျင်းပမည်". The Irrawaddy. 7 January 2018.
  3. Pyin, Lwin (2017-03-07). "မေမြို့က သူရမ ချစ်ပို အကြောင်း". Lwin Pyin News. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  4. "Tribal Action Group, Tribal Action Group, indigenous, Hill tribes, Montagnards, Degar, Karen, KNU, Dega KNDO". www.tribalactiongroup.com. Archived from the original on 2019-03-08. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  5. Ago, Moeheinin #myanmar • 3 Years (2017-11-03). "ဦးလေးချင်းပြောတဲ့ သူရ မချစ်ပို". Steemit. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  6. admin (2017-04-27). "သောကြာပြင်ကျေးရွာ သောကြာပြင်ပန်းခြံ၌ သူရမချစ်ပို ရုပ်တုအုတ်မြစ်စီပန္နက်တင်မင်္ဂလာ အခမ်းအနား ကျင်းပ". eTanitharyi. Archived from the original on 2020-08-14. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  7. admin (2017-08-10). "သူရမချစ်ပိုရုပ်တု ဇာတိတွင် လှည့်လည်". Dawei Watch / The Voice of Minorities. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  8. "မြန်မာ့သမိုင်းတွင် တစ်ဦးတည်းသော သူရဘွဲ့ရအမျိုးသမီး သူရမချစ်ပို". Myanmarbookshop.
  9. "အမျိုးသမီး သူရဲကောင်း သူရမချစ်ပို အကြောင်း ဇာတ်ကားရိုက်ကူး". Myanmarload. Retrieved 2023-01-05.
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