Word: burma
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Orderly and friendly, yet adamant and determined, the people of Burma pressed their demand for the three-week-old government of President Maung Maung to step down and open a path to a free, democratic state. Finally the regime began to buckle under the pressure. At an extraordinary session on Saturday, the ruling Burma Socialist Program Party gave way -- at least, partway -- to the popular clamor and declared an apparent end to the country's 26 years of one-party domination. The B.S.P.P. said elections would be held and multiple parties would participate. But the government set no date...
Those who made the appointment intended it to be a gesture of mollification, an invitation to calm. But to much of Burma, the announcement last week that Attorney General Maung Maung, one of only two civilians in the previous Cabinet, had become the country's President was but another move in a cynical game of new man, same government...
...General Sein Lwin on Aug. 12, after only 17 days in power, the appointment outraged the students and Buddhist monks who sparked the uprising against an autocratic regime. The government's failure to move toward a multiparty democracy led to renewed calls for a national strike this week, leaving Burma poised for another plunge into the violence that, by unofficial estimates, had already claimed 3,000 lives...
Given the depth of popular frustration, it was thought unlikely that the bloodshed was over -- or that Maung Maung, 63, was secure in his new job. The British-trained lawyer has long-standing ties to General Ne Win, Burma's strongman from 1962 until his resignation on July 23 and the man blamed for widespread repression and an economy that lies in ruins. Maung Maung served with Ne Win in the fight to free their country of colonial domination during World War II and, after Ne Win's 1962 military coup, became Chief Justice of Burma's high court...
WORLD: Violent protests in Burma bring down a despised strongman...