Word: burma
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...desirability and benefits of the system seem so self-evident that the agonies often endured to bring it into being are easily forgotten. Last week upheavals in two very different countries brutally reminded the world that there is no inevitability to the progress of the democratic idea. In Burma a new military regime seized power, snuffing out the hopes of that country's population for a new dawn of political freedom after the 26-year nightmare of Ne Win's repressive dictatorship. In Haiti a cadre of sergeants took over the government from a cadre of generals who had themselves...
Other than the accidental synchronicity of their respective coups, Burma and Haiti have virtually nothing in common culturally, socially or historically. What they do share is a constellation of evil circumstances that, taken together, offer a cautionary illustration of just how hard it is for backward and impoverished societies to grope their way from national repression to political and civic liberty. Both are desperately poor: Haiti's per capita income of $393 is the lowest in the western hemisphere, while Burma's $197 makes it one of the least developed nations in the world. Both have been ruled for decades...
...both Burma and Haiti last week, the key to a better life seemed as elusive as ever. Throughout Burma, troops loyal to the new military leader, General Saw Maung, Burma's fourth head of government in four months, bloodied demonstrators brave enough to continue protesting the resumption of military rule. In the days after the coup, the crack of rifles could be heard as soldiers fired from rooftops at people who had gathered outside the U.S. embassy. Many more were cut down at Sule Pagoda as thousands of people fled the onslaught, screaming when the soldiers lowered their rifles...
...Haiti's history offers little encouragement, Burma's experience offers at least a glimmer of hope. Rangoon enjoyed 14 years of democracy between the end of British colonial rule in 1948 and Ne Win's seizure of power in 1962. The key to the metamorphosis from angry revolt to ordered self-rule, explains Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, is the acceptance of restraint. "It's not just a matter of going to the barricades," he says. "You must go from being a mob to being a people. From there, you must develop habits of self-organization." In both...
That plea was widely interpreted to mean that the government doubted the loyalty of its own troops, and its concern seemed largely justified. Of the nine regional commands in Burma, all headed by brigadier generals, about half are said to remain loyal to Ne Win. But regional command troops are locally recruited and almost certainly would not fire on their own people if ordered; nor would their junior officers. Last week a captain of one of three elite infantry divisions in Rangoon went over to the opposition, creating a new wash of speculation about the fealty of even the most...