Word: rangoon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...decade sought to bring peace to the world was denied it in death. The funeral of former U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, who died in New York City on Nov. 25, last week erupted into a violent rebellion in Rangoon, Burma's capital. Rioting students, monks and workers clashed with government troops in a bizarre battle over Thant's final resting place. At week's end martial law was imposed in an effort to resolve the tense situation...
...fighting began when Thant's body was being escorted to a modest private burial service in a small family mausoleum in Rangoon's Kyandaw Cemetery. Probably because Thant had been a political ally of Premier U Nu, who was overthrown in a 1962 coup by President Ne Win, the current regime was trying to inter him with a minimum of fanfare. But the city's volatile students, who apparently wanted a more imposing burial site for their distinguished countryman, abducted the body on the way to the mausoleum. Along with antigovernment Buddhist monks, they paraded it through...
...autocratic Premier Ne Win's efforts to reduce their power and influence. Students and workers, unhappy about economic stagnation and the government's repressive policies, are natural allies of the monks. Last June, rioting led by longshoremen and factory workers left at least 22 dead in Rangoon's streets. The latest disturbances were at least as serious. More ominous is the fact that tensions are bound to continue even after the battle for U Thant's body is over...
...Burma Communist Party launched its first major offensive at the end of 1971 by laying siege to the administrative outpost of Kunlong in the Wa States in the northeasternmost corner of Burma. The intensity of the Communist attack came as a surprise to Rangoon, which had hitherto paid scant attention to the existence of the small and weak party. But between 1968 and 1971, a group of Burmese Communists who had been given ideological training in China set up a strong organization among the peasants of the Shan State. The resulting attack on Kunlong ended in a standoff after...
Western intelligence experts know very little about the B.C.P. and where it gets its support. Some observers in Rangoon fear that the offensive represents a Chinese military thrust into the area. At the very least, the AK-47 rifles, howitzers and machine guns used by the B.C.P. could have come only from China's Yunnan province just across the border. According to U.S. State Department estimates, the vast majority of rank and file soldiers are ethnic Burmese. But most of the officers and cadres down to the company level are probably ethnic Chinese trained in China. Still, nobody...