page_title: Aung Shwe
section_title: Military and governmental career
hierarchical_section_title: Aung Shwe / Military and governmental career
caption_attribution_description: English: Brigadier Aung Shwe, Burmese Ambassador, meeting Mayor Frank Kitts in Wellington NZ, 13 July 1961
context_page_description: Brigadier General Aung Shwe was a Burmese politician and a member of General Ne Win's Burma Rifles rising to Brigadier General. He was one of the founders and former President of the National League for Democracy who took charge of the party when Aung San Suu Kyi and Tin Oo were under house arrest in the early 1990s and 2000s.
context_section_description: Aung Shwe played a role in the 1958 caretaker government and served as a high-ranking military officer led by General Ne Win. During this time, he also served as the Commander of the Southern Regional Command from 1955 to 1961 and Northern Regional Command in 1957.
  Aung Shwe was a member of the Burma Socialist Party before the 1962 Burmese coup d'état. He was forced to retire from Tatmadaw in 1961 after a public disagreement with General Ne Win, on the military's long-term role in government.
  He then served as Burmese ambassador to France, Australia, Egypt, Spain and New Zealand from 1961 to 1975. Subsequent to his posting in Australia, He served in Egypt and then in Paris until his retirement from government service in 1975. He settled in Rangoon, where in 1988 public demonstrations erupted that eventually spread across the country. The people of Burma were tired of the authoritarian rule of the Burma Socialist Programme Party.
caption: Aung Shwe as Ambassador to Australia, 1961
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