Word: gun
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...TIME's photo-essay "Gun Culture U.S.A...
...most seats in parliament, with ethnic-based political parties coming in second and third and the junta-backed party finishing fourth. However, the junta ignored the results and kept its grip on power. "Some analyses say that even a rigged election is O.K., if it leads to democracy," says Gun Maw, a high-ranking officer in the Kachin Independence Army, one of the armed ethnic groups operating on the border with China that has decided not to give up its guns. "But it looks like these elections will not lead to democracy, so it is better not to be involved...
...Kokang, under a commander named Peng Jiasheng, recently rejected the regime's border-force offer. Soon afterward, gun battles erupted between the Burmese military and elements of Peng's Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, as the Kokang militia is known. Throughout August, the Burmese army made incursions into the Kokang enclave, a region it had largely kept out of since the 1989 cease-fire was signed. The initial reason given by the junta for its forays into Kokang territory was that a weapons factory there was being used to churn out illegal narcotics. Several of the ethnic militias in that...
...countries have strengthened economic sanctions - took the unusual step last week of castigating the junta for the Kokang situation. The Chinese Foreign Ministry warned Burma that it should "properly handle domestic problems and maintain stability in the ... border region." The stability-obsessed Chinese government presumably isn't pleased with gun battles on its southern flank, including stray fire that claimed the life of a Chinese citizen in Yunnan...
...Army reinforcements to its land across from the conflict zone, it can only hope that the Burmese regime keeps a fragile peace with the various ethnic groups in other border areas. "This area has always been like a bomb waiting to go off," says the Kachin Independence Army's Gun Maw. "Everyone, from all sides, has to be very careful...