Edward Michael Law-Yone

Who was Edward Michael Law-Yone?

Edward Michael Law-Yone was a Burmese journalist and official of Burma and then of the Burmese government-in-exile, as well as an author. He was born in Kamaing, Myitkyina District, British Burma. Educated at Saint Peters' School in Mandalay, at 16 he went to work as a clerk in the Burma-China border frontier service. He joined the Burma Railways in 1930 as a probationer and by 1938 was in charge of the rates and commercial section, traveling in that year over the recently constructed Burma Road to survey the route proposed for linking the Burma and Yunnan-Indochina Railways. In August 1948, he founded The Nation, Burma's most influential English language newspaper, and served as its chief editor, until his 5 year detention, following Ne Win's coup d'état in 1962.

In a 1957 interview with American news broadcast See It Now, he said:

Law-Yone was one of the very first recipients of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, in 1959. The Nation was shut down in May 1963, the first to be closed by the new government.