Pe Thein Zar (8 January 1943 – 30 July 2018) was a Mon student leader, lawyer, revolutionary, and writer who was imprisoned for seven years for his activism.

[1] Pe Thein Zar was born in Kamawet Village (town), Mudon Township, in Mon State, Burma on 8 January 1943.

[1][2] In 1987, the Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) government unexpectedly announced the demonetization of the 100-Kyat-note for the third time an thousands of people lost all their savings, some of whom committed suicide.

In that year, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) organised a free and fair general election.

As had been expected, the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide victory.

The SLORC refused to transfer the power to the NLD and many elected members of the parliament went underground to join up with various armed resistance groups.

On 18 December 1990, with the support of the NMSP, the KNU, the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and other ethnic groups, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB), led by Dr. Sein Win, a cousin of Aung San Suu Kyi, was established at Mannerplaw.

In February 1993, he attended a diplomacy training course, organised by Jose Ramos Hota who was later to become the second president of East Timor), at the University of New South Wales.

[3][2] In October 1993, under a programme of the UN International Indigenous Year, he led a delegation of NDF representatives to several European countries, to draw attention to the plight of the ethnic minorities of Burma under the Burmese military regime – to the gross human rights abuses, forced labour, rapes, murder and arbitrary arrests committed by the Burmese armed forces in the ethnic minority areas.