Word: shwedagon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...takeover by General Saw Maung, who took power in a coup last September. Since then, more students and other protesters have been arrested or shot. Government employees deemed sympathetic to the democracy movement are being purged from their jobs. Troops are everywhere, even in the compound of the Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma's holiest shrine. "They have stripped away the pseudosocialist camouflage that ((former President)) Ne Win put over the army in the 1970s," says a Western observer in Rangoon. "It has always been a military government. Now it's a nakedly military government...
...protests for almost a year, only to be quickly suppressed by security forces under the command of Sein Lwin, then the party's secretary-general. Ever strengthening tremors began two weeks ago, as larger and larger crowds, first of students, then of all manner of citizens, gathered at the Shwedagon Pagoda, the splendid golden shrine in North Rangoon, and the Sule Pagoda in the center of the city...
There are no skyscrapers or neon signs. The largest building around is the Strand Hotel, left over from colonial days, where you can get a lobster dinner for four bucks. But the city is really dominated by the Shwedagon Pagoda, a huge golden dome three kilometers above the city, surrounded on eight sides by smaller pagodas in resplendent red and silver. Both the men and women on the streets wear the traditional longgyi, a tube-shaped piece of cloth knotted at the waist and falling to the ankles. Even children, but especially old women, smoke sold everywhere on the sidewalks...
...Shwedagon Pagoda, my friend Tom and I were lucky enough to happen on a pwe, one of the Burmese religious festivals that go on all night and all day, held on various special occasions, like weddings. We stood at the door watching as two female dancers in elaborate face make-up and gold-embroidered longgyis danced to the rhythm of traditional wooden Burmese instruments. The dancers were encircled by small children at their feet and adults further back, all squatting on the floor...