Soe Htut ( my, စိုးထွဋ်; born 29 March 1961) is a Burmese military officer and incumbent

Minister for Home Affairs An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergency ...

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 ...

. Soe Htut is a career soldier, and currently holds the rank of Lieutenant General.

Early life and education

Soe Htut was born to an army general, Brigadier General Lun Maung, and his wife Shwe Thet, in Mandalay, Burma (now Myanmar). He graduated from the 64th intake of the Officer Training School, and received a bachelor's degree in physics, and a master's degree in defence studies.

Career

Soe Htut was nominated as minister for

Home Affairs An interior ministry (sometimes called a ministry of internal affairs or ministry of home affairs) is a government department that is responsible for internal affairs. Lists of current ministries of internal affairs Named "ministry" * Ministr ...

by Myanmar's commander-in-chief,

Min Aung Hlaing Min Aung Hlaing ( my, မင်းအောင်လှိုင် abbreviated: MAL ; born 3 July 1956) also known as Alaungsithu is a Burmese politician and army general who has ruled Myanmar as the chairman of the State Administration C ...

, and appointed in March 2020, replacing Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe. According to analysts, Kyaw Swe's close relationship with

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 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Myanm ...

may have prompted the ministerial replacement. Prior to this appointment, Soe Htut had been appointed as the head of Office of Military Security Affairs in 2016.

Controversies

In July 2020,

Justice for Myanmar Justice For Myanmar (abbreviated JFM) is a covert group of activists campaigning for justice and accountability for the people of Myanmar. Justice for Myanmar's public website launched on 28 April 2020. Since its launch, the group has published a ...

published an exposé revealing Soe Htut's

conflicts of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations ...

in several government contracts awarded in Pa’O Self-Administered Zone to H Double H, a construction and engineering firm owned by his three sons. Soe Htut has also courted controversy for being part of a committee to investigate the

2020 Hpakant jade mine disaster On 2 July 2020, a major landslide at the Wai Khar jade mining site in the Hpakant area of Kachin State, Myanmar, killed between 175 and 200 miners in the country's deadliest-ever mining accident. At 06:30 local time (MMT) heavy rains trigge ...

, despite also being one of the largest individual shareholders of

Myanma Economic Holdings Limited Myanma Economic Holdings Public Company Limited ( my, မြန်မာ့စီးပွားရေးဦးပိုင်အများနှင့်သက်ဆိုင်သောကုမ္ပဏီလီမိတက်, abbreviated ...

, a military corporation with significant jade mining interests.

Personal life

Soe Htut is married to Nila Sein and has three sons namely Min Than Htut, Soe Min Htut and Sithu Htut.

References

People from Mandalay 1961 births Burmese generals Living people Government ministers of Myanmar Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List {{Myanmar-bio-stub