Word: burma
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Today, Nang Nang lives on the rugged Thailand-Burma border in the hamlet of Loi Tai Leng, the headquarters of the Shan State Army (S.S.A.) and the refuge for hundreds of families fleeing the Burmese army's long-running campaign of terror against ethnic minorities such as the Shan. They include more than 200 orphans: Nang Nang, a shyly smiling girl in a grubby tracksuit, shares a tin-roofed dormitory with dozens of other girls who sleep on a wooden platform over a mud floor. For many, this has been home for five years, but not for much longer...
...Shan orphans are among the most vulnerable victims of policies hatched in faraway Bangkok and Rangoon. The Shan are the largest of Burma's eight main ethnic minorities, which form a third of the country's 43 million population. Many of the groups are fighting for independence from the rule of the military junta. In recent months, the Burmese army and its proxies have stepped up efforts against ethnic insurgents such as the Shan and the Karen, driving thousands of refugees into Thailand. There, they receive cold comfort. The Thai government does not grant official refugee status to the Shan...
...Shan. A recent report by the New York-based NGO also documents the murder, rape, enslavement and brutal displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians during the Burmese army's long-running assault on Karen insurgents; some 650,000 people, says HRW, have been made homeless in eastern Burma alone. The junta has dismissed allegations of army atrocities against ethnic minorities as "totally untrue...
...still grace half-timbered houses with names like All in All and Fernside, and horse-drawn victorias recall a gaslighted London. The town's central clock tolls with the exact chime of Big Ben, and the local rest house, formerly the chummery, or bachelor's quarters, of the Bombay-Burma Trading Co., still serves roast beef each night at 7 sharp. An old porter asks a visitor where he lives. England, comes the answer. "Rule Britannia," intones the man without a trace of irony. "Britannia rules the waves...
...Rangoon street hopes, a little wistfully, that his government may in time choose to emulate China's new liberalism and throw open its doors to the West. But that, most foreign observers agree, represents the triumph of optimism over realism. For the moment, it seems, Burma will continue to remain a never-never land where history is held under house arrest, and all the clocks have stopped...