Kawmhu Township ( ) is a township of

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

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

. It is located in the southwestern section of the Region. Kawhmu was one of the townships in Yangon Region most affected by Cyclone Nargis. The township only has one town, the principal town of

Kawhmu Kawmhu Township ( ) is a township of Yangon Region, Myanmar. It is located in the southwestern section of the Region. Kawhmu was one of the townships in Yangon Region most affected by Cyclone Nargis. The township only has one town, the princip ...

, which is divided into 7 urban wards. It additionally has 130 villages grouped into 55 village tracts.

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 ...

Su Su Nway 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. 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 political activist. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. She served as State Counsellor of Myanmar and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Myanmar), Ministe ...

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: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

in elections slated for April 2012. The elections came after the Burmese government, led by President

Thein Sein Thein Sein (; IPA: ; born 20 April 1944) is a Burmese politician and retired military general who served as the 9th President of Myanmar from 2011 to 2016. He previously served as prime minister from 2007 to 2010, and was considered by many ...

, 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 (, ; Abbreviation, abbr. NLD; Burmese abbr. ဒီချုပ်) is a deregistered liberal democratic political party in Myanmar (formerly Burma). It became the country's ruling party after a landslide victo ...

(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, 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