Word: burma
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...glimmer of democracy is snuffed out, tentative moves toward a more open economy that Burma began in 1989 are likely to go with it. Sometimes called the world's richest basket case because of its wealth of such natural resources as teak and minerals, Burma needs foreign aid and investment to modernize. In the wake of the elections last May, international lending agencies were lining up to welcome Burma, and foreign businessmen were studying the country's new, liberal economic policies, but many investors are pulling back. "No one will lend money to Burma until it sorts out its political...
Just as the crackdown was reaching its peak last week, Amnesty International made public another indictment of the army's brutal rule. In a 72-page special report, the London-based human-rights organization accused Burma's junta of "silencing the democratic movement" with systematic terror and torture...
Silencing democracy describes Burma's standard operating procedure since 1962, when General Ne Win seized power from an ineffectual civilian government. His iron hand at home and suspicion of foreigners turned Burma into a hermit state. At the same time, his bizarre form of socialism reduced the once prosperous former British colony to penury while more backward neighbors were performing miracles of economic growth...
...worldwide amazement, the May 1990 elections in Burma, renamed Myanmar last year, were generally free and fair. The League, under the leadership of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma's national hero, won a huge majority in parliament. The military showed its true colors by keeping her under house arrest and calling for a convention to draw up a new constitution, a process that could take years...
When Japanese professor Sadako Ogata arrived in Burma last week as a special envoy of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Saw Maung expressed his contempt for the very notion. "I will not give the kind of rights demanded by the Voice of America," he said in a speech. "I will not give the students the right to stage demonstrations. I won't let the people emulate the incidents in Eastern Europe...