Word: junta
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...Sure enough, seconds later, they open fire. But until that moment - until the moment this jubilant crowd scatters in anger and fear - millions of Burmese had glimpsed what life was like without their hated rulers. That glimpse might yet undo a junta, which today faces unprecedented pressure from its long-suffering people, from other nations, and perhaps even from within its own military ranks. Are the protests that took place over 10 days in late September over, or merely dormant...
...returned perhaps a dozen times, witnessing changes that were usually for the worse. People grew poorer, stalked by disease and malnutrition. Inflation lurched ever upwards. Schools and hospitals crumbled with neglect. Insurgencies raged along the rugged borders. The brightest Burmese sought lives abroad. The only real constant was the junta, which had seized power in 1962 and run a promising nation into the ground...
...should get closer." And so I find myself in a crowd near the Sule Pagoda, facing soldiers and riot police. Only a handful of monks have escaped the junta's dragnet to join this protest. When more trucks pull up at the intersection, and the troops inside noisily cock their rifles, the crowd tenses as one. Seconds later, there are explosions - more smoke bombs - and we are running for our lives...
...behind: hundreds of troops, marching in formation, sealing off downtown Rangoon. Between the riot police and the troops are trucks with loudspeakers making announcements to clear the streets. For more than a week - for most of their lifetimes - Burmese have called peacefully for dialogue. This is the closest the junta gets to it: screaming at its people through loudspeakers from a truck surrounded by men with guns...
...power. His book The Trouser People (Penguin; 2003) is the definitive account of modern Burmese society. Andrew arrived in Rangoon just in time to catch the uprising at its most optimistic: the monks had been joined by thousands of ordinary Burmese, infused with hope that they would get the junta to bend and perhaps break. Andrew joined the crowds, marveling at the courage and candor of the protesters. "After years of sneaking around this country," he says, "talking in whispers, always aware of the trouble I might cause the Burmese who dared speak to me, it was extraordinary to stand...