Word: burma
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...outside an army museum. Then, last month, came reports of small demonstrations on campuses as far north as Myitkyina. Despite all this, none of my Rangoon friends were predicting an imminent 1988-style uprising. "People are just too scared," said one. DONATE BLOOD, urged the ads in state newspapers. Burma's democrats already have, by the bucketful...
...Much of this shadowy violence was probably perpetrated by the state itself and conceivably augured a distant leadership conflict. Some Burma watchers talk of a split between the regime's hard-liners and moderates, a wishful hypothesis that essentially boils down to two people. The so-called moderate is the ageless, reptilian Khin Nyunt, the newly fashioned "Prime Minister General," who is always conspicuously equipped with a sidearm during official visits, even to kindergartens. His rival is Than Shwe, the top general and archetypal hard-liner. To encourage unity, the Burmese military has always promoted loyalty before brains, and Than...
...Walking through downtown Rangoon, I noticed with horror how acres of historic buildings have been demolished to make way for the modern towers the junta hopes will dominate the capital's skyline by 2006, when Burma is to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and host its the summit. Most of these projects, including the inauspiciously named Twin Towers, sit idle for lack of investment. Ordinary Burmese feel baffled and betrayed by the encouragement their oppressors get from Asia's leaders. Privately, Southeast Asian diplomats insist they are heaping more backroom pressure on Burma than their abysmal public...
...military has already proved false an age-old Burmese saying, "The night cannot get darker after midnight." Poverty, fear, the paucity of opportunities, the remorseless persecution of the best and the brightest, the slow extinguishing of hope: what was once unimaginably bad in Burma has grown worse with each passing year. And yet, while writing this, I receive an e-mail sent at great risk by Ko Myo in which he has listed the names of 10 men, women and children, aged 13 to 70, along with their professions: housewife, merchant, student, mother-to-be. These people, he says, were...
...DIED. SEIN LWIN, 81, former Burmese President and army general known as the "Butcher of Rangoon"; in Rangoon. A member of the military junta that seized control of Burma in 1962, Sein Lwin was behind some of the army's bloodiest massacres of civilians. These included the killings of hundreds of students protesting the 1962 coup and of an estimated 3,000 people in street demonstrations in 1988, during which Sein Lwin replaced strongman Ne Win as President. But he was unable to quell the political agitation and stepped down after only 18 days in office...