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Gives an account of Burma's pro-democracy movement and Aung San Suu Kyi's prominent leadership role
This book analyses what Myanmar's struggle for democracy has signified to Burmese activists and democratic leaders, and to their international allies. In doing so, it explores how understanding contested meanings of democracy helps make sense of the country's tortuous path since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won historic elections in 2015. Using Burmese and English language sources, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar reveals how the country's ongoing struggles for democracy exist not only in opposition to Burmese military elites, but also within networks of local activists and democratic leaders, and international aid workers.
Once a royal kingdom and then part of the British Empire, Burma long held sway in the Western imagination as a mythic place of great beauty. In recent times, Burma has been torn apart and isolated by one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. Now, Zoya of the, a young member ofthe Karen tribe in Burma, bravely comes forward with her astonishingly vivid story of growing up in the idyllic green mansions of the jungle, and her violent displacement by the military junta that has controlled the country for almost a half century. This same cadre has also relentlessly hunted Zoya and her family across borders and continents. Undaunted tells of Zoya’s riveting adventures, from her unusual childhood in a fascinating remote culture, to her years on the run, to her emergence as an activist icon. Named for a courageous Russian freedom fighter of World War II, Zoya was fourteen when Burmese aircraft bombed her peaceful village, forcing her and her family to flee through the jungles to a refugee camp just over the border in Thailand. After being trapped in refugee camps for years in poverty and despair, her family scattered: as her father became more deeply involved in the struggle for freedom, Zoya and her sister left their mother in the camp to go to a college in Bangkok to which they had won scholarships. But even as she attended classes, Zoya, the girl from the jungle, had to dodge police and assume an urban disguise, as she was technically an illegal immigrant and subject to deportation. Although, following graduation, she obtained a comfortable job with a major communications company in Bangkok, Zoya felt called back to Burma to help her mother and her people, millions of whom still have to live on the run today in order to survive—in fact, more villages have been destroyed in eastern Burma than in Darfur, Sudan. After a plot to kill her was uncovered, in 2004 Zoya escaped to the United Kingdom, where she began speaking at political conferences and demonstrations—a mission made all the more vital by her father’s assassination in 2008 by agents of the Burmese regime. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Zoya has become a powerful spokesperson against oppressors, undaunted by dangers posed to her life. Zoya’s love of her people, their land, and their way of life fuels her determination to survive, and in Undaunted she hauntingly brings to life a lost culture and world, putting faces to the stories of the numberless innocent victims of Burma’s military
The Burmese army took political power in Burma in 1962 and has ruled the country ever since. The persistence of this government--even in the face of long-term nonviolent opposition led by activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991--has puzzled scholars. In a book relevant to current debates about democratization, Mary P. Callahan seeks to explain the extraordinary durability of the Burmese military regime. In her view, the origins of army rule are to be found in the relationship between war and state formation.Burma's colonial past had seen a large imbalance between the military and civil sectors. That imbalance was accentuated soon after formal independence by one of the earliest and most persistent covert Cold War conflicts, involving CIA-funded Kuomintang incursions across the Burmese border into the People's Republic of China. Because this raised concerns in Rangoon about the possibility of a showdown with Communist China, the Burmese Army received even more autonomy and funding to protect the integrity of the new nation-state.The military transformed itself during the late 1940s and the 1950s from a group of anticolonial guerrilla bands into the professional force that seized power in 1962. The army edged out all other state and social institutions in the competition for national power. Making Enemies draws upon Callahan's interviews with former military officers and her archival work in Burmese libraries and halls of power. Callahan's unparalleled access allows her to correct existing explanations of Burmese authoritarianism and to supply new information about the coups of 1958 and 1962.
A New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2019 A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2020 “An urgent book.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times During a century of colonialism, Burma was plundered for its natural resources and remade as a racial hierarchy. Over decades of dictatorship, it suffered civil war, repression, and deep poverty. Today, Burma faces a mountain of challenges: crony capitalism, exploding inequality, rising ethnonationalism, extreme racial violence, climate change, multibillion dollar criminal networks, and the power of China next door. Thant Myint-U shows how the country’s past shapes its recent and almost unbelievable attempt to create a new democracy in the heart of Asia, and helps to answer the big questions: Can this multicultural country of 55 million succeed? And what does Burma’s story really tell us about the most critical issues of our time?
Freedom from Fear - collected writings from the Nobel Peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi's collected writings - edited by her late husband, whom the ruling military junta prevented from visiting Burma as he was dying of cancer - reflects her greatest hopes and fears for her fellow Burmese people, and her concern about the need for international co-operation in the continuing fight for Burma's freedom. Bringing together her most powerful speeches, letters and interviews, this remarkable collection gives a voice to Burma's 'woman of destiny', whose fate remains in the hands of her enemies. Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and leader of Burma's National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the world's greatest living defenders of freedom and democracy, and an inspiration to millions worldwide. This book sits alongside Nelson Mandela's memoir Long Walk to Freedom. 'This book is bound to become a classic for a new generation of Asians who value democracy even more highly than Westerners do, simply because they are deprived of the basic freedoms that Westerners take for granted'The New York Times 'Aung San Suu Kyi's extraordinary achievement has been to confront the regime peacefully, reasonably and persuasively... [in] one of the most laudable continuing acts of political courage' Financial Times 'Such is the depth of passion and learning that she brings to her writings about national identity and its links with culture and language that she has attracted the admiration of intellectuals around the world' Sunday Times Aung San Suu Kyi is the leader of Burma's National League for Democracy. She was placed under house arrest in Rangoon in 1989, where she remained for almost 15 of the 21 years until her release in 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners. She is also the author of Letters from Burma.
This book explains how Burma's booming drug production, insurgency, and counter-insurgency interrelate—and why the country has been unable to shake off thirty years of military rule and build a modern, democratic society.
Previous edition: London: Penguin, 1997.
Burma had the brightest prospects of any Southeast Asian nation after World War II. In the years since, however, it has dropped to the bottom of the world's socioeconomic ladder. The grossly misruled nation—officially known as Myanmar—is in the midst of a political transition based on a new constitution and its first multiparty elections in twenty years. That transition, together with a recent change in U.S. policy, prompted this book. Two military dictators have ruled Myanmar with an iron fist for nearly fifty years. A popular uprising in 1988 was brutally suppressed, but it forced the generals to hold an election in 1990. When an anti-regime party led by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won by a landside, however, the generals rejected the results, put Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of two decades, and continued to exploit the country's abundant resources for their own benefit while depriving citizens of basic services. Years of Western sanctions had no measurable impact, but in 2009 the Obama administration adopted a new policy of "pragmatic engagement," encouraging greater respect of democratic principles and human rights as a basis for eventual removal of sanctions. This thoughtful volume examines Burma today primarily through the eyes of its ASEAN partners, its superpower neighbors China and India, and its own people. It provides insights into the overarching problem of national reconciliation, the strategic competition between China and India, the role of ASEAN, and the underperforming, resource-cursed economy. Contributors include Pavin Chachavalpongpun (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore), Termsak Chalermpalanupap (ASEAN Secretariat, Jakarta), David Dapice (Tufts University), Xiaolin Guo (Institute for Security & Development Policy, Stockholm), Gurmeet Kanwal (Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi), Kyaw Yin Hlaing (City University of Hong Kong), Li Chenyang (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies a
UPDATED For more than 50 years, Burma has been ruled by a succession of military regimes which rank among the most oppressive dictatorships in the world. Accused of crimes against humanity, they have brutally mistreated their people. Yet, in the last few years, the pace of change has been breathtaking. Much is now hoped for. However, Burma is one of the most ethnically diverse nations in Southeast Asia: there are roughly seven major ethnic groups living along its borders. They have a long history of conflict with the government and have been cruelly treated by the current regime. Their future affects the country as a whole, as Benedict Rogers explains. Drawing heavily on his many fact-finding visits both inside Burma and along its frontiers, he gives a unique appraisal of the current ethnic situation and its implications for the nation as a whole. Wide-ranging, expertly researched, and full of brand new accounts of the courage and determination of the Burmese people, Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads explains the country's conflicted history, as well as its contemporary struggle for justice. Burma stands poised for freedom, or for further repression. No one can be sure. This fascinating and accessible book describes what is really happening inside this beautiful, secretive, and potentially prosperous country.