Sasa (politician)

Sasa (Burmese: ဆာဆာ; lit. 'Higher and higher'; also known as Salai Maung Taing San[1][2]), known honorifically as Dr Sasa, is a Chin medical doctor, philanthropist and civil society activist[3] who currently serves as the Minister of International Cooperation in the cabinet of National Unity Government.[4] He previously served as the Special Envoy of Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) to the United Nations.[5][6] He is the founder of Health and Hope,[7] a Christian health organization that works with churches to promote development in Chin State and trains villagers to become community health workers.[8] Sasa has been recognised as one of the "Tearfund's Inspired Individuals" for his contributions in Myanmar.[9]

In this Burmese name, the given name is Sasa. There is no family name.
Dr.
Sasa
ဆာဆာ
CRPH's Special Envoy to the United Nations
In office
22 February 2021 – 16 April 2021
Minister of International Cooperation of National Unity Government of Myanmar
Assumed office
16 April 2021
PresidentWin Myint
Prime MinisterMahn Win Khaing Than
Vice PresidentDuwa Lashi La
Personal details
Bornc. 1980
Lailenpi, Chin State, Myanmar
CitizenshipBurmese
Political partyNational League for Democracy
Alma materShillong College, Yerevan State Medical University
OccupationMedical doctor, philanthropist and politician
Websitewww.healthandhope.org

Early life and education

Sasa was born circa 1980s[10] in Lailenpi Town, Matupi District, Chin State. His name, Sasa, was given by his grandmother which means 'higher and higher' in Chin tradition.[7] After he completed his secondary education from a high school in Yangon where he had to walk for two weeks to attend, he volunteered to improve education of his hometown.[7]

Sasa was sent to Shillong College in India with the support of his community in 1996.[11][8] There he quest for a scholarship through Prospect Burma from which he met with Genette Dagtoglou who sponsored him to study medicine[2] at Yerevan State Medical University,[12][1] Armenia.[2] He is a Christian.[13]

Career

Humanitarian work

In 2007 his final year as a medical student, Sasa brought medical help and treated over 3,500 patients in towns where famine struck, including his hometown. When he graduated in 2009, Sasa started teaching primary healthcare to villagers, and founded Health and Hope Christian organization.[11] The region's first primary healthcare service centre, Health and Hope works with local churches to train two community health workers each from 150 villages.[7][14] The organization counts Charles III among its patrons.[13]

He also managed to construct Lailenpi airstrip, the first private airport in Chin State.[15]

Politics

In 2020, Sasa became a leading member of Chin State NLD's election committee for the general election.[3] A fresh face in politics, his involvement in election campaigning in Chin State in November made him known to the wider public across Myanmar.[16]

In the midnight of 1 February 2021, he was together with Aung San Suu Kyi before the coup. He ran away to India from the border and evaded the arrest of the military, pretending to be a taxi driver. It was a three day journey to get to safety.[17]

On 22 February 2021, he was appointed as CRPH's Special Envoy to the United Nations.[18][19] A few days later, on 4 March 2021, he submitted a letter to the United Nations Security Council requesting the international body to honour its Responsibility to Protect (R2P) commitments with reference to the 2021 Myanmar protests and the violent military response to them.[20]

On 16 April 2021, he was appointed as the Minister of International Cooperation in the cabinet of newly formed National Unity Government by the members of CRPH.[4]

Lawsuit

According to a statement from the Myanmar Police Force, Dr Sasa (a) Sasa San (a) Tai Sa lived in Lailinpe town, Matupi Township, Chin State, has been charged under the law.[21] The Dekkhina District Court has issued an arrest warrant on 15 March. He was charged under Section 122 (2) of the Criminal Code for high treason as he had accepted the appointment of Myanmar Representative to the United Nations by the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH).[21][22][23][24]

References
  1. thawngthawng. "Salai Maung Taing San a.k.a Dr. Sasa nih Chin mipi sinah zaangnawlnak mithli he a tuah cang – TIMES OF CHIN NEWS". Retrieved 2021-03-05.
  2. "Profile of a supporter". Prospect Burma. Retrieved 2021-03-06.
  3. "Aung San Suu Kyi: on the crest of a 'red wave' - poised to be swept back into office". Bangkok Post. 7 November 2020.
  4. "အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ NUG ဖွဲ့စည်းကြောင်း CRPH ကြေညာ". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese).
  5. "CRPH ကုလ အထူးသံတမန်များအဖြစ် ဒေါက်တာဆာဆာနှင့် ဦးထင်လင်းအောင်ကို တာဝန်ပေး". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 23 February 2021.
  6. "Committee of Ousted Myanmar Lawmakers Appoints International Envoys". The Irrawaddy. 23 February 2021.
  7. UK, Dynamic Design. "The story so far - Health & Hope". healthandhope.org.
  8. "Hope flies high in the Chin Hills". Frontier Myanmar. 16 April 2020.
  9. Lamble, Presented by Lucy; Stephens, produced by Danielle (20 June 2018). "The doctor from Myanmar faced with 1 million patients and a plague of rats – podcast". The Guardian.
  10. "ချင်းတောင်တန်းတွေဆီက မြင့်မားသော မျှော်မှန်းချက်". Frontier Myanmar (in Burmese). 16 April 2020.
  11. "လွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားပြုကော်မတီ ကုလသမဂ္ဂနဲ့ နိုင်ငံတကာဆက်ဆံရေး ကိုယ်စားလှယ်ခန့်အပ်". Radio Free Asia.
  12. "Dr. Maung Taing San von thei cu ngaihchia taktak a si – Chin World News Evening". Retrieved 2021-03-06.
  13. UK, Dynamic Design. "Health & Hope Myanmar - Health & Hope". healthandhope.org. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
  14. "ကျန်းမာရေးနှင့်မျှော်လင့်ခြင်း – Health & Hope | THE MYANMAR AND BRITAIN ASSOCIATION".
  15. M, Hn (27 October 2020). "ဒေါက်တာဆာဆာရဲ့ ချင်းပြည်ကနေ ရန်ကုန်ကို လဘက်ရည် လာလာသောက်မယ်ဆိုတာ တကယ်ဖြစ်လာပြီလား". White Sone.
  16. "ဒေါက်တာဆာဆာကို CRPHက ကုလ အထူးသံတမန်ခန့်". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese).
  17. "Myanmar's Special Envoy Urges UN to Send Peacekeeping Troops". world.kbs.co.kr. 14 March 2021.
  18. "Appointment of Special Envoy to United Nations". Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw. 2021-02-23.
  19. "ကုလသမဂ္ဂဆိုင်ရာအထူးသံတမန်နှင့် နိုင်ငံတကာဆက်ဆံရေးကိုယ်စားလှယ် CRPH ခန့်အပ်". 22 February 2021.
  20. "Dr. Sasa nih 'R2P policy ningin Myanmar mipi veng hna' tiah UN Security Council a hal". The Chin Express. 5 March 2021.
  21. "Lawsuit filed against Dr Sasa and arrest warrant issued". The Global New Light of Myanmar. Ministry of Information (Myanmar). 17 March 2021. Retrieved 17 Mar 2021.
  22. "Factbox: Envoy of Myanmar's ousted civilian government charged with treason". Firstpost. 2021-03-17. Retrieved 2021-03-17.
  23. "Factbox: Envoy of Myanmar's ousted civilian government charged with treason". news.yahoo.com. Retrieved 2021-03-17.
  24. "Envoy of Myanmar civilian gov't defiant after treason charge". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2021-03-17.
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