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U Wasawa (Burmese: ဦးဝါသဝ, also spelled U Warthawa), also known as 550 Sayadaw (Burmese: ၅၅၀ ဆရာတော်), is a Burmese ultranationalist monk and pro-military supporter who leads a Pyusawhti militia in Kanbalu.

Biography

U Wasawa was born in Muukwa village, Taze, Myanmar. He is the abbot of the Tharthana Alinnyaung monastery in Hmaw Taw village and was a prominent former leader of the now defunct Ma Ba Tha, an extremist Buddhist organisation. Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, U Wasawa established a Pyusawhti militia to launch offensives against the region's People's Defense Force. Several villages in Kantbalu have been turned into Pyusawhti bases, with U Warthawa reportedly forcing locals to join the militias. Initially armed with homemade weapons, around 900 Pyusawhti members in Kantbalu have since been supplied with modern BA-63 (G-3) rifles, MA-1 assault rifles, and carbines. His influence has spread to Kanbalu, Taze, and Kyunhla—key towns known for their military and Union Solidarity and Development Party support. He has since expanded his network throughout Sagaing, where there are now at least 77 pro-junta militia groups.

Following the fall of Lashio in August 2024, U Wasawa urged the military to bomb the northern part of Shan State, controlled by the Three Brotherhood Alliance, stating that it would be better if only the land remained. In a media interview, he called for the removal of villages that support the People's Defense Force (PDF) from the map of Myanmar. He ordered his forces to set fire to 10 villages in Khin-U, Sagaing Region, claiming that these villages were supporting the People's Defense Force (PDF).

In May 2024, U Warthawa was bestowed the title "Mingala Dhamma Jotikadhaja" by the Young Men's Buddhist Association (YMBA) in recognition of his dedicated service to the wellbeing of the patriarch and religious affairs.

References

1. ^ "ပျူစောထီးခေါင်းဆောင် မဘသ ဆရာတော် ဦးဝါသဝ". RFA.
2. "Cannon fodder: Inside Myanmar's Pyusawhti militias". Frontier Myanmar. 6 December 2023.
3. "ဘုန်းကြီးများ စီစဉ်သော စစ်သင်တန်းနှင့် ပျူစောထီးအဖွဲ့များ". Myanmar Now. 30 November 2022.
4. "မယ်တော်ကြီးကို ပြုစုနေရတဲ့ ဆရာတော် ဦးဝါသဝ". Myanmar National Post.
5. "လူသတ်ရန် လက်နက်ကိုင်ခိုင်းသည့် ဦးဝါသဝကို သာသနာပြန့်ပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းများလုပ်သည်ဟုဆိုပြီး YMBAက ဘွဲ့ပေး". Tachileik News Agency (in Burmese).
6. "Pro-Myanmar Junta Militias, Nationalist Monks Forcibly Recruiting Villagers in Sagaing". The Irrawaddy. November 2, 2022.
7. "Nationalist Monks Recruit Pro-Myanmar Regime Militias in Sagaing". The Irrawaddy. June 29, 2022.
8. "Myanmar Regime-Backed Militia Kidnaps Nine Women in Sagaing". The Irrawaddy. August 3, 2022.
9. "ရှမ်းပြည်နယ်မြောက်ပိုင်း "မြေကျန်ရင်ရပြီ" လို့ ဦးဝါသဝ မိန့်ကြား (ရုပ်/သံ)". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 10 August 2024.
10. Now, Myanmar (30 November 2022). "PDF ထောက်ခံသည့်ရွာများကို မြန်မာ့မြေပုံမှ ဖယ်ရှားရန် ပျူစောထီးဘုန်းကြီးကြုံးဝါး". Myanmar Now.
11. "ကန့်ဘလူတွင် ပျူစောထီးခေါင်းဆောင် ဦးဝါသဝက ရွာသားများကိုခြိမ်းခြောက်၊ စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်က ရွာမီးရှို့". DVB.
12. "ခင်ဦးမှာ စစ်ကောင်စီနဲ့ မဘသဘုန်းကြီး ဦးဝါသဝရဲ့ ပျူတွေက ရွာ ၁၀ ရွာ မီးရှို့ဖျက်ဆီး". MAWKUN. 5 September 2024.
13. "Young Men's Buddhist Association gives title to monk who 'attacks civilians'". Mizzima. May 9, 2024.

• Burmese Buddhist monks
• Theravada Buddhist monks
• Living people
• People from Sagaing Region
• Buddhism-related controversies