Former Myanmar Dictator Dies

Gen. Ne Win, Myanmar's former military dictator who dragged his country into poverty during his 26 years in power, died Thursday while under house arrest, family members said. He was 91.

The family members said he died at 7.30 a.m. in his lakeside villa where he had been kept confined along with his daughter since March 7 following the arrest of his three grandsons and son-in-law on charges of attempting to overthrow the military government. The family members spoke on condition of anonymity.

No other details of the circumstances of his death were immediately available.

Once a powerful figure, his enormous behind-the-scene clout began to wane a few years ago and he stood totally discredited earlier this year with the arrest of his relatives.

His son-in-law — Aye Zaw Win, 54, the husband of Ne Win's daughter Sandar Win, and the couple's three sons — Aye Ne Win, 25, Kyaw Ne Win, 23, and Zwe Ne Win, 21 — were sentenced to death Sept. 26 after being convicted of treason on the coup charges. They have appealed the verdict.

The barbed wire fence that had blocked the road to his house since his arrest was opened slightly on Thursday, enabling cars to pass through. Three soldiers stood near the barricade.

There was no sign of unusual activity at the house. Funeral arrangements were not immediately known, and the government did not make any announcement.

Ne Win had suffered a heart attack in September 2001 and had a pacemaker attached. He was last seen in public in good health on March 21, 2001 when he offered lunch to 99 Buddhist monks and more than 500 friends, most of them his socialist cronies.

Ne Win was at the forefront of Myanmar's struggle for independence from Britain, which was achieved in 1948. He seized power in a bloodless coup in 1962, starting an era of authoritarianism that would sully his reputation as a national hero.

He also achieved notoriety as a playboy and reclusive eccentric. A deep belief in numerology prompted him once to issue banknotes in 45 and 90 kyat denominations because the numbers were divisible by his lucky number nine.

He retired from politics in 1988, just before a popular uprising for democracy triggered by his quarter century of misrule, that catapulted Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the late independence hero Gen. Aung San, to political prominence.

Thousands of civilian protesters were gunned down in the military crackdown that followed and many more fled into exile. Myanmar, also known as Burma, is still viewed by the West as a pariah state.

Even after standing down, Ne Win was thought to wield influence - how much is unclear — behind the scenes in the military regime that succeeded him and still remains in control.

Josef Silverstein, an American political scientist who has studied Myanmar for a half century, said Ne Win led his country from the verge of prosperity to ruin.

"When he took power he broke all his oaths by setting the constitution aside. Under his rule, Burma literally went into the tank," he said in a telephone interview.

When Ne Win took power in 1962, Myanmar was well on the way to recovering from the ravages of the Second World War, exporting 2 million tons of rice per year. But by 1987, Myanmar was reduced to the status of a least developed nation, he said.

However, a mystique surrounded Ne Win, who was regarded by many in Myanmar as having almost magical powers of survival that allowed him to stay in power so long and live into old age.

For years, rumors that the "Old Man" had died circulated periodically in Yangon.

Since October 2001, the regime and Suu Kyi have held closed-door talks, resulting in some releases of political prisoners. But as neither side has revealed the substance of the discussions, many observers remain skeptical they can achieve political reconciliation.