Burma/ Background History
Country Report
Burma/Myanmar1 is a Southeastern Asia country with coasts on the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal. The area of the country is 678,500 sq km; it shares borders with Bangladesh and India in the west, China in the north and Laos and Thailand in the east.
Burma has a tropical monsoon climate, and it is rich in natural resources such as petroleum, timber, tin, antimony, zinc, copper, tungsten, lead, coal, some marble, limestone, precious stones, natural gas, and hydropower.
With a population of nearly 52 million people (2003 estimate), Burma is a multi-ethnic country; the Arakanese, the Burmans, the Chins, the Kachins, the Karens, the Karennis, the Mons, the Shans are the major indigenous national races of Burma. The official language is Burmese and other ethnic groups have their own languages.
Historical Background
Pre-World Wars Period
After three Anglo-Burmese wars spanning over a period of 60 years (1824, 1852 and 1885), all of Burma was colonized as part of the British Empire in 1886 and immediately annexed as a province of British India. In 1935, the Government of Burma Act formally separated Burma from the Indian colony.
During the Second World War, the Japanese drove the British out with the assistance of Burmese nationalists. However the Japanese reneged on their promises to grant Burma independence. For that reason, Burmese nationalists secretly organized a nationwide coalition named the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) to expel the Japanese.
The founder of Burma army and one of the leaders of AFPFL, General Aung San (father of 1991 Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi) established contact with the Allies and negotiated an agreement with the British to help them defeat the Japanese.
Post-World Wars Period
After the end of the Second World War, Burma was again under the British. More Burmese nationalists and politicians joined the AFPFL, which became the most popular political front. Gen Aung San, as the General Secretary of the League, made efforts for reconciliation and unity in the country by holding regular meetings with ethnic leaders throughout Burma.
In 1947, together with representatives from the frontier areas, Gen Aung San and the Burmese leaders signed a significant agreement to unite and to fight jointly for independence, and to establish the Union of Burma. That agreement is known as the ‘Pang Long Agreement’.2 In recognition of this step, following a conference in London, Britain promised Burma independence.
Unfortunately, before the constitution was drawn up, the national leader Gen Aung San, aged 32, and six ministers of his newly formed cabinet were assassinated. In January 1948, six months after the tragedy, Burma gained independence from British.
The 1947 Constitution failed to reflect the spirit of ‘Pang Long Agreement’, it was federal in form but unitary in essence. Civil war began soon after the country gained independence, as the communist factions went underground and Karen National Union (KNU) reacted in self-defense to military attacks by pocket army troops of Gen Ne Win who was then Vice Chief of Staff of the Burma army.
Attempts for national reconciliation were made by both the government and opposition groups throughout the next 10 years without success. Eventually the AFPFL government itself split into two factions. The then Chief of Staff General Ne Win took control of the government in 1958, as a “caretaker government”. And following the general election in 1960, he returned power to civilian rule.
Citing the threat of secession by the ethnic states as an excuse, General Ne Win staged a military coup on March 2, 1962 and announced the establishment of the “Revolutionary Council”. TheRevolutionary Council ended Burma’s brief period of democracy by abolishing the Constitution, claiming that the military saved the country from disintegration.3 Just three months after the coup, a major student demonstration against the military regime was staged at Rangoon University, but the regime brutally suppressed the protest killing more than 100 students and injuring hundreds more. The military blew up the Student Union building on the campus, claiming that it was headquarter of the insurgents.
Gen Ne Win proceeded to re-organize political power in an authoritarian direction. He abolished the 1947 Constitution, dismissed parliament, banned political parties, replaced the independent courts, and formed a hierarchy of councils reaching the village level. He also detained the Prime Minister U Nu, cabinet members, the Chief Justice, Members of Parliament, leaders of non-Burman ethnic segments (especially of the Shans), politicians (both on the left and the right of the political spectrum), and so on; closed down papers and imposed censorship.
Within a few years of nationalizing industry and prohibiting the masses from engaging in private economic activity, exports declined. There were shortages of basic commodities, and the standard of living declined rapidly.
In 1974 the regime adopted a new Constitution and changed the country’s name to the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. The Burmese Socialist Program Party (BSPP), a party that the generals had created when they seized the state power in 1962, was adopted as the only legal party in Burma. Through a controlled election, Burma’s military leaders transferred power to themselves as civilians, with Gen Ne Win, chairman of the Revolutionary Council, becoming U (Mr.) Ne Win, chairman of the BSPP and President of the new Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma.
From 1974 to 1988, the BSPP ruled Burma as a one-party state, suppressing all protests and demonstrations against military rule through use of the armed forces. In this period, the nation’s economic problems grew, and in 1987 the United Nations declared Burma as a Least Developed Country (LDC). It had been one of Asia’s richest countries when Gen Ne Win took over. For the third time in 1987, the BSPP demonetized three units of currency with no warning and no offer of replacement. As a result, more than 70 percent of Burma’s currency became worthless and people’s life-savings were lost forever.
During these times, there were a number of anti-BSPP protests by students, workers and monks. These protests included a demonstration at the funeral of former United Nations Secretary-General U Thant. The military stormed the campus of Rangoon University and imprisoned hundreds of activists. Owing in large part to the extreme hardships associated with the so-called “socialist” economic failures and the monopolization of political and economic resources by the military, Gen Ne Win’s state “of the soldiers, for the soldiers, by the soldiers” finally was confronted and challenged by popular forces in a countrywide uprising.
