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Myanmar
Many here do not yet
realize how deep of a
rabbit hole that Burma
( Myanmar ) comprizes.
History:
The New Yorker
A Reporter at LargeAugust 12, 1996 Issue
BURMA
By Amitav Ghosh
The New Yorker, August 12, 1996 P. 38
REPORTER AT LARGE on Burma. General Ne Win, Burma's longtime dictator, seized power in 1962 and shut Burma off from the outside world for almost 30 years. The writer travelled to Rangoon. Although the writer is Indian, his uncle, who had to flee Burma in 1942 to escape the Japanese Army, described Burma as a "golden land." What went wrong? Fifty years earlier, Burma had been the most developed country in the region… Now it was one of the most impoverished countries in the and suffered from repression, xenophobia, and civil abuse. Burma's future changed the day General Aung San was assassinated in 1947. Aung San was supposed to assume Burma's leadership once the British granted the country its independence in 1948; as the leader of the independence movement, he was able to bring together the various minority groups which inhabit Burma. After his death, civil war broke out, with a vast Communist uprising; tensions between the different groups escalated. General Aung San became Burma's most pervasive icon. In 1988, Aung San's daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, emerged as the personification of Burma's democratic resistance to military rule. Her leadership along with large student demonstrations forced the General Ne Win to resign. A group of senior military officers called the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) took over the government, intensifying repression. Suu Kyi formed the National League for Democracy (NLD) to counter SLORC's authority. In 1989, Suu Kyi was put under house arrest, which ended in 1995. After being released, Suu Kyi held weekend meetings for her followers; she is the symbol of Burma's democracy movement. The writer interviewed Suu Kyi in Rangoon and then travelled to Thailand to meet with Karenni insurgents, ma
ny of whom were students, fighting the Burmese Army. The writer spoke with Ko Sonny, the Karenni commander. SLORC disrupted a conference marking the anniversary of the NLD's election victory in 1990, banned Suu Kyi's meetings, and prohibited NLD's planned draft of a new constitution. The international community was out-raged, but Burma was still recognized by the Association of South-East Asian Nations. The writer found Suu Kyi to be much more the politician when he spoke with her one last time in July 1996. She still believes that democracy will win.
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Published in the print edition of the August 12, 1996, issue
https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1996-08-12/flipbook/038