Kawmhu Township ( my, ကော့မှူး မြို့နယ် ) is a township of

Yangon Region Yangon Region(, ; formerly Rangoon Division and Yangon Division) is an administrative region of Myanmar. Located in the heart of Lower Myanmar, the division is bordered by Bago Region to the north and east, the Gulf of Martaban to the south, ...

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

. It is located in the southwestern section of the Region. Kawhmu was one of the townships in Yangon Region most affected by

Cyclone Nargis Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm Nargis ( my, နာဂစ်, ur, نرگس ) was an extremely destructive and deadly tropical cyclone that caused the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of Myanmar during early May 2008. The cyclo ...

Politics and history

Labor activist and

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although nu ...

Su Su Nway Su Su Nway (, ; born 1971; also known as Su Su Nwe) is a Burmese democracy activist and political prisoner. In 2005, she became the first Burmese national to successfully sue local government officials under a 1999 law on forced labour. Force ...

is from Htan Manaing village in the township, where she became the first Burmese national to successfully sue local government officials under a 1999 law for

forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...

. In January 2012, after spending years in house arrest under the orders of Myanmar's ruling junta,

Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi (; ; born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2 ...

announced that she would be running for elected office to represent Kawhmu in

parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

in elections slated for April 2012. The elections came after the Burmese government, led by President Thein Sein, began normalising relations with the West and showing other signs of democratic reform. On 1 April 2012, Suu Kyi won her local election and now represents Kawhmu Township in the Burmese lower house of parliament. She leads the

National League for Democracy The National League for Democracy ( my, အမျိုးသား ဒီမိုကရေစီ အဖွဲ့ချုပ်, ; abbr. NLD; Burmese abbr. ဒီချုပ်) is a liberal democratic political party in Myanmar (Burma). It ...

(NLD), a party that had not participated in major elections for two decades because of various bans and boycotts. In the

2020 Myanmar general election General elections were held in Myanmar on 8 November 2020. Voting occurred in all constituencies, excluding seats appointed by or reserved for the military, to elect members to both the upper house - Amyotha Hluttaw (the House of Nationalitie ...

, Htay Aung contested as an independent candidate for the Kawhmu Township constituency against the State Counsellor

but lost.

References

Townships of Yangon Region {{Yangon-geo-stub