Word: rangoon
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...remarkable courage shown by Burma's marching monks last September captured the world's imagination. The protests encouraged Western governments, many of which first imposed economic sanctions against Rangoon a decade ago, to broaden those measures; the E.U., for example, has now banned a far wider range of exports from Burma...
...After last fall's crackdown, India promised to stop arms sales to Rangoon. China could be persuaded to go along. Beijing has already cut off non-humanitarian aid to other rogue nations like Zimbabwe. As with Burma, Robert Mugabe's regime stained China's international image; Beijing also fretted that unrest against the Mugabe government might spark local anger at Chinese interests. Chinese diplomats privately admit that Beijing fears that violent instability in Burma might threaten Beijing's investments - in October, with Burmese resentment of China soaring, gunmen fired on the Chinese consulate in Mandalay. Embargo commitments by those Asian...
...uprising, with its indelible image of saffron and red clad monks marching with overturned bowls—a refusal to take alms from the junta or its soldiers amounted to excommunication. On Sept. 18, 1988, the army opened gunfire on a crowd of tens of thousands of protestors in Rangoon (now Yangon), and trucked away hundreds more whose fate remains unknown. It is estimated that more than 3,000 Burmese were killed that black September...
...Monday, Sept. 24, this year, the army brutally cracked down on an estimated 100,000 protestors in Rangoon. Foreign diplomats estimate that several hundred, including many monks, were shot or bludgeoned to death by the army. The protests had started a month earlier due to the steep hike in fuel prices, and gathered massive momentum when the junta refused to apologize for firing over the heads of protesting monks in Pakokku on Sept...
Like the previous crackdown in 1988, the latest massacre in Burma remains shrouded in mystery. But there is a tragic changelessness in the scene of a crowd of unarmed people being gunned down by an army. From Jallianwala Bagh to Tiananmen to Rangoon, it must be the most frightful of all spectacles, as Churchill quoted Macaulay, to witness the strength of a civilization without its mercy. And to that we must add, without its memory...