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Kyu Kyu Hla (Burmese: ကြူကြူလှ; pronounced [tɕʰú tɕʰú l̥à]; born 13 April 1954) is the acting First Lady of Myanmar and Spouse of the Prime Minister of Myanmar. She a retired educator who served as lecturer at the Myanmar language department of Yangon University. Kyu Kyu Hla is the wife of Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, a Burmese army general who is the 12th Prime Minister of Myanmar and the current acting President of Myanmar since 22 July 2024.

She became spouse of the Prime Minister of Myanmar following her husband's transition to Prime Minister of Myanmar on 1 August 2021, whereupon Min Aung Hlaing has ruled the nation as Chairman of the State Administration Council (SAC) after the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état. She is also the honorary patron of Myanmar Women's Affairs.

Biography

Kyu Kyu Hla was born on 13 April 1954 in Yangon, Burma (Myanmar) or Zee Kyun village under Auk Nat Maw village-tract in Thandwe, to parents Maung Maung Hla and Ohn Hla. In 1970, she passed her matriculation exam. In 1974, she graduated with a B.A. in Myanmar and earned her M.A. in Myanmar in 1981 from Rangoon University. She worked as a tutor at Rangoon University in 1981 and later moved to Taunggyi College in 1986. In 1989, she served as an assistant lecturer at Rangoon University, retiring from her academic post in 1994. She married Min Aung Hlaing when he was a junior military officer in 1980. When her husband Min Aung Hlaing later became the Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Army, she gained influence in the military community and led the wives of high-ranking military officers.

Kyu Kyu Hla is nicknamed "Amay Kyu" (Mother Kyu) by military communities. She regularly accompanies her husband as a member of military delegations to foreign countries.

In February 2020, Kyu Kyu Hla and her husband Min Aung Hlaing together placed the "Hti" umbrella on top Bagan's most powerful ancient Htilominlo Temple. The meaning of the temple name is "need the royal umbrella, need the King". Many people believed that the ceremony was a yadaya and seeking divine blessings for her husband's glory.

Kyu Kyu Hla became a major target of a domestic boycott and social punishment by people who oppose the military regime when her husband Min Aung Hlaing seized power from a democratically elected government, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and whose the military regime has killed nearly 2,000 anti-coup protesters.

On 22 February 2021, detained government economic policy advisor Sean Turnell's wife, Ha Vu, an Australian-Vietnamese academic, wrote a letter to Kyu Kyu Hla, appealing "wife to wife" for her husband’s release.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has imposed sanctions on Kyu Kyu Hla since 2 July 2021, pursuant to Executive Order 14014, in response to the Burmese military's coup against the democratically elected civilian government of Myanmar. The sanctions include the freezing of assets in the US and a ban on transactions with US persons.

Kyu Kyu Hla was widely criticized on 29 November 2021 when junta-controlled media reported that Kyu Kyu Hla led families from the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defense Services to chant Paṭṭhāna, the seventh text of the Theravāda Buddhism philosophy, to pray for peace and for Myanmar to overcome catastrophes. At that event, she was seated in a cushioned chair in the centre of the hall while the wives of military personnel sat on the floor. A chair is commonly used as a metaphor for power in Myanmar politics, prompting many comments on social media such as, "Not only the husband, but also Kyu Kyu Hla craves a chair."

Kyu Kyu Hla has been writing pro-military articles and poems in anniversary editions of military magazines under the pen name of Thiri Pyae Sone May (Myanmarsar). She wrote a poem commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Myanmar Air Force, "To Diamond Jubilee Air Force", that was featured in the state-controlled newspapers. The poem praised the Myanmar Air Force, which has carried out numerous lethal air raids on civilians and non-military targets in Hpakant, also known as the Hpakant massacre.

During the military council meeting on 13 February 2022, Min Aung Hlaing praised to his wife Kyu Kyu Hla as "a teacher who had made significant sacrifices". On 2 March 2023, the military government awarded her the title of Agga Maha Thiri Thudhamma Theingi [my], one of the country’s highest religious honours, for significantly contributing to the flowering and propagation of Buddhism.

She became the acting First Lady of Myanmar when her husband assumed the role of acting President on 22 July 2024.

Kyu Kyu Hla delivered a video speech to the Fourth Eurasian Women's Forum, held from September 18 to 20, 2024, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In her speech, she emphasized the importance of recognizing and celebrating not only the everyday contributions of women but also their courage, confidence, perseverance, leadership, resilience, and creativity in tackling global challenges.

Notes

1. According to her author profile in the state-owned newspaper New Light of Myanmar, she was born in Yangon, Myanmar.

References

1. "Relatives of Min Aung Hlaing's wife exempted from joining in military service". Narinjara.
2. "Burma-related Designations; Iran-related Designations Removals; Non-proliferation Designations Removals". U.S. Department of the Treasury. Archived from the original on 2022-09-29.
3. Irrawaddy, The (5 July 2023). "Wives of Generals Pray for Their Husbands on Myanmar Women's Day". The Irrawaddy.
4. "Myanmar Military Chief's Wife Took Friends to Russia on Shopping Trip". The Irrawaddy. 18 July 2022.
5. "Myanmar defence chief, wife visit Sabarmati Ashram". The Times of India. 10 July 2017.
6. "Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar Armed Forces, arrived in the port city of Visakhapatnam accompanied by his wife Kyu Kyu Hla and a fifteen-member high-level delegation on a three-day visit to the Eastern Naval Command (ENC)". The Times of India. 13 July 2017.
7. "Junta Watch: Coup Leader's Wife Draws Public Ire; Suu Kyi's New Charge and More". The Irrawaddy. 4 December 2021.
8. "Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and wife Daw Kyu Kyu Hla and families of the Office of Commander-in-Chief (Army, Navy and Air) pour water on Bo trees". seniorgeneralminaunghlaing.com. 14 May 2019.
9. Irrawaddy, The (2023-01-21). "Junta Watch: Dictator's Wife Hails Women Amid Military's Femicide; EAOs Rise Against Regime's Poll Plan; and More". The Irrawaddy. Archived from the original on 2023-02-08. Retrieved 2023-02-08.
10. "SAC Chairman's Wife Daw Kyu Kyu Hla Attends Opening Ceremony Of 19th Annual Meeting Of MWAF - Global New Light Of Myanmar". 2023-01-17. Archived from the original on 2023-03-04. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
11. "နှစ်ပေါင်းတစ်ရာ တက္ကသိုလ်နှင့် ရင်ထဲကမြန်မာစာ". MDN - Myanmar DigitalNews (in Burmese).
12. "Wife of military chief wishes 'best of luck' to jailed USDP supporter". Coconuts. 28 May 2017. Archived from the original on 1 August 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
13. "Criticized, Myanmar's Influential Monk Close to Coup Leader Breaks Silence on Killing Protesters". The Irrawaddy. 5 March 2021. Archived from the original on 7 March 2021. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
14. "Myanmar Coup Maker's Birthday Greeted With Curses, Nationwide Condemnation". The Irrawaddy. 3 July 2021. Archived from the original on 1 August 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
15. "US Sanctions More Myanmar Junta Members, Their Relatives and Chinese Firms". The Irrawaddy. 3 July 2021. Archived from the original on 1 August 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
16. "'Please get your husband to free mine'". The Australian. 25 February 2021. Archived from the original on 7 November 2021. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
17. "Australian academic Sean Turnell marks 10 months' incarceration in Myanmar". Mizzima. 5 December 2021. Archived from the original on 10 March 2023. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
18. "စစ်ကောင်စီအဖွဲ့ဝင် ခုနှစ်ဦးနဲ့ စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်မိသားစုဝင် ၁၅ ဦးကို အမေရိကန် ပိတ်ဆို့အရေးယူမည်". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). 2 July 2021. Archived from the original on 1 August 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
19. "အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်၏ဇနီး အပါအဝင် ၂၂ ဦး ကို အမေရိကန်က ဒဏ်ခတ်အရေးယူ". DVB (in Burmese). 3 July 2021. Archived from the original on 1 August 2021. Retrieved 1 August 2021.
20. "Junta Watch: Coup Leader's Wife Draws Public Ire; Suu Kyi's New Charge and More". The Irrawaddy. 4 December 2021. Archived from the original on 12 December 2021. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
21. Irrawaddy, The (2022-12-17). "Junta Watch: Regime Boss Ties 'Patriotism' to Fuel Bills as Wife Pens Ode to Air Force". The Irrawaddy. Archived from the original on 2023-01-09. Retrieved 2023-01-09.
22. "မင်းအောင်လှိုင်က သူ့မိန်းမ ကြူကြူလှကို အဂ္ဂမဟာသီရိသုဓမ္မသီင်္ဂီဘွဲ့ ပေး အပ်၊ သန်းရွှေ မိန်းမ ကြိုင်ကြိုင် အပါအဝင် စစ်ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ဟောင်းနဲ့ ခေါင်း ဆောင် ဟောင်း မိန်းမ တွေကိုလည်း ဘွဲ့တွေ ပေးပြန်". Khit Thit Media (in Burmese). 2023-03-02. Archived from the original on 2023-03-07. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
23. ENG, IRW (2023-03-04). "Junta Watch: Regime boss targets 'Western culture'; Than Shwe Falls From Favor; and More". The Irrawaddy. Archived from the original on 2023-03-04. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
24. "ပူတင်တက်တဲ့ အမျိုးသမီးဖိုရမ် ဒေါ်ကြူကြူလှ ဗီဒီယို မိန့်ခွန်းပေးပို့ [Daw Kyu Kyu Hla sent a video speech to the Women's Forum attended by President Putin.]". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 21 September 2024.

• Burmese educators
• 1954 births
• Living people
• Spouses of prime ministers of Myanmar
• People from Rakhine State
• Individuals related to Myanmar sanctions