Word: burma
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...India's achievement in holding the world's largest ever election, with minimal disruption and violence, and no controversies (à la hanging or pregnant chads). This election is a beacon of hope in a region that only seems to produce bad news from Nepal to Sri Lanka, Afghanistan to Burma. No wonder India is so disillusioned with the attitudes of the West. Like most people, Indians have long memories. One day, the West will come to rue this indifference toward a country that is one of very few true democracies outside Europe and North America. Alex Joseph, Patterson Lakes, Australia...
Reports this week reminded the world of a fitting - if slightly bewildering - relationship: a decrepit and slow North Korean cargo ship, reportedly laden with arms, is on its way to Burma, a country ruled by a similarly obstinate and oppressive military junta. A watchful U.S. missile destroyer is following, close on its heels. (Read "Time to Face Facts on Our North Korea Ignorance...
...paltry 10 knots an hour. By Thursday, it was believed to be chugging through Chinese or Taiwanese waters, having left the North Korean port of Nampo a week ago, and headed, according to the South Korean press, to the Burmese port of Thilawa. Its cargo is unknown; Burma's state newspaper claims authorities expect the arrival of a "rice-bearing" North Korean vessel, though most news reports suspect the Kang Nam 1 bears a load of small arms and other conventional weapons. North Korea, whose people have lived on the verge of famine for decades, is not a known food...
North Korean links with Burma range far beyond small firearms - indeed, ties between the two outcast nations are literally deep. North Korean engineers reportedly aided the Burma's junta in building a vast series of 600 to 800 tunnel complexes and underground facilities, particularly beneath the junta's secretive new capital of Naypyidaw. Photographs leaked earlier this month to YaleGlobal, an international affairs website, show North Korean technicians milling around guest houses in the capital. Others published by the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma, an anti-government television channel, detail the extent of some of these complexes, which have...
...Burmese and North Koreans were not always this close. In 1983, North Korean agents bombed a South Korean delegation visiting a monument in Rangoon. More than 20 people died and Burma severed relations with Pyongyang. But the two nations held secret talks during the 1990s and restored formal ties in 2007. Soon thereafter, North Korean vessels started docking at Burmese ports, reportedly unloading heavy equipment and weapons parts. It is suspected that resource-rich Burma sends minerals, rubber and foodstuffs to North Korea in return for such assistance...