ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the layered biography of the Rangoon Secretariat building complex, purpose-built as the headquarters of the British colonial administration in British Burma. Completed in 1905, it became a central stage in Myanmar’s political memoryscape for generations, as the site of General Aung San’s 1947 assassination (and annual Martyrs Day commemoration), and under military rule, a space of fear, rumoured interrogation, and state propaganda. Across British colonialism, Tatmadaw authoritarianism, and democratisation, the Secretariat has been mobilised for power legitimation, from imperial soft power and Tatmadaw coercion to the suppression and strategic reframing of Aung San’s legacy – while the Tatmadaw has in turn constrained and revived the Martyrs Day. The chapter also analyses tensions around the Secretariat’s redevelopment project. Initially set to balance public memory with limited commercial retail, since the 2021 coup, plans have been recast to privilege profit-driven, elite leisure activities at the site. Tourists snap selfies while military elites throw lavish events amid the ‘ghosts of the tortured’. All this serves to marginalise the Secretariat’s function as a site of national mourning and risks the loss of historical memory.
