Word: rangoons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Forty-one years of fighting for independence have worn down the rough edges of revolution like a well-pumiced stone. The largest of half a dozen tribes that rebelled against the republic of Burma in 1948, Karen insurgents have spent the past four decades waging war against Rangoon to establish an independent state in the southern part of the country. Of the 3 million ethnic Karens living in Burma, one-fourth have fled to jungle villages in the south, where the 5,000-man Karen army is based. Ignored or forgotten by most of the world, the anticommunist Karens rate...
...military leaders in Rangoon seemed to have considered every angle save one: if the country's first multiparty balloting in 30 years was actually clean, the ruling powers would be dealt a humiliating defeat. Early returns last week indicated that Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, took 392 of the new National Assembly's 485 contested seats. Although final results will not be available for perhaps two weeks, the army- backed party has so far claimed only nine seats. How the remaining parliamentary seats would be apportioned among the other 91 parties was not clear...
...first, Aung San Suu Kyi will need to get her own political party in order. "There's no ruling out the possibility that the National League for Democracy and the opposition in general could succumb to the old Burmese disease of factionalism," warns a Western diplomat based in Rangoon. Excessive wrangling within the league would provide the military junta with a convenient excuse to delay a transfer of power...
...April 1988 was a matter of happenstance: she came home to nurse her mother, who died last January. But the explosive antigovernment protests that gripped Burma swept Suu Kyi, 44, into her nation's turmoil, from which she emerged as a clear, determined voice of opposition. Says a Rangoon lawyer: "She is the only person in our politics who is stainless...
...some 2 million dues-paying members in a country of 40 million people. During electrifying tours of the countryside, she disregarded the army guns that menaced her and her followers. And she has routinely flouted martial-law regulations prohibiting gatherings of more than five people. At one rally in Rangoon, soldiers aimed automatic weapons at the crowd that gathered to listen to her. "We are grateful to those who are giving the people practice in being brave," she snapped. While an officer recited over a loudspeaker the law prohibiting gatherings, Suu Kyi used her own microphone to confront the intruders...