Myanmar/Burma Unveiled
Myanmar/Burma Unveiled
The term “Southeast Asia” itself did not exist before the 20th century and was first established as a regional concept in pre- Japan. First the region was known to the Japanese as nanyô, or "South Seas". The origin of this term is not clear, although the word nanyo itself is simply the Japanese reading of the Chinese nanyang. But still older even is the cultural traffic in both directions between India and Indo-China. Shwe Dagon in Burma and the still further Angkor Wat in Cambodia, are witnesses to this. The last twenty years in Burma however have been most marked by the low-intensity yet ongoing,civil war involving minority communities. Thus today, one could argue that Burma is not only one of the last vestiges of colonialism, its military rulers derive their strength from the cold war, with a special relationship to China. In 1995 furthermore, great fanfare accompanied the official return, from China, of the revered Buddhist tooth relic for installation in the pagoda after its "1500 years in China." Today this is enshrined in official publications, such as China Myanmar Goodwill Visits of Great Historic Significance, an illustrated, English language pamphlet containing reprints of relevant news articles, photographs, and songs, published in Myanmar in 1997. In fact already after the WWII fall of Burma, traffic from India through the Himalayas to Kunming became the only channel for outside military and food supplies to China. In order to effectively strengthen international cooperation against Japan, China decided to send three divisions of troops on a military expedition to India. Joining the rest of the transportation corps, twenty two monks followed Chinese troops into battle against the Japanese on the border between India and Burma. Of course that wasn’t communist China yet.When early 1947 India British officers, where to contemplated the once unthinkable demise of the Raj were beset by mounting worries. Nehru's emotional attachment to the princely state of Kashmir seemed the most likely cause of conflict between the two new dominions, no one knew whether it was going to join India or Pakistan. While in Burma Governor Rance bowed to force majeure, noting that 12,000 Indian troops were scheduled to leave Burma in February 1947 and there would be no replacements. He urged the immediate passage of a House of Commons amending bill to expand the powers of the present government to include those formerly retained by the governor. Thus the AFPFL leadership was abruptly invited to London after New Year. (Rance,in Tinker, Burma, vol. II, pp. 139-44).
The goal was to keep Burma within the Commonwealth and out of Soviet clutches. If they were to go to London , Aung San and his supporters had to be assured of total success. Any temporizing by the British would compromise them completely. It would mean handing the leadership of Burmese nationalism to one or other of the communist factions. British power was already declining rapidly, but this was a decisive moment in the history of Burma and, arguably, in that of South and Southeast Asia as a whole. If Burma had become a communist state on independence, as later happened in Vietnam , the Cold War in Asia might have taken a very different course. Certainly, with the 'cold weather' of 1946-7 approaching, the communists were in a restive mood. Their aim, like their confreres in Vietnam , was to take over and dominate a coalition of nationalist forces. If they could not do this, they would adopt the tactics of the communists in China ; they would go underground and fight the nationalists, denouncing them as stooges of imperialism. Fortunately for the AFPFL, the Burmese communists split into ideological and personal factions, with neither the Vietnamese nor the Chinese model triumphing. In the longer term it was to be military nationalists who would win out. As relations between the moderates and the communists worsened with the collapse of the strikes during October, the AFPFL voted to expel the communists. (Angelene Naw, Aung San and the struggle for Burmese independence, Copenhagen , 2001, pp. 177-81).
In fact as late as On 23 March 1947, standing beneath a huge illuminated map of the continent, Nehru opened the Asian Relations Conference with the words: 'When the history of our present times comes to be written, this Conference may well stand out as the landmark which divides the past of Asia from the future.' Continue...
The year 1948 saw Indian power recede from Burma for the first time in 130 years. One of the most venerated public places in Mandalay , particularly in the year of independence when enemies were pressing in on all sides, was the pagoda that held the great image of Buddha Mahamuni. This had,been taken from the kingdom of Manipur on the Burma-India border in the late eighteenth century when the Burmese king Bodhayappa had been trying to create a Buddhist empire in Southeast Asia. The raid into the northeast of the Indian subcontinent had attracted the attention of a much bigger and well-armed commercial empire, that of the East India Company. From the 1820S onward, Burma had been subject to successive waves of invasion by British troops, colonial logging companies, ruby and oil interests and, finally, Indian merchants and labourers. In 1944 and 1945 the British Indian Army had invaded the country and as late as October 1947 there had still been thousands of Indian soldiers there. That influence had now been withdrawn. Indian troops had left Burma along with the last British officers and civil servants. Up to 800,000 Indian civilians remained in the country, some like Balwant Singh in positions of authority. But India 's proxy empire in Burma disappeared with the end of British rule in the subcontinent'. Nehru and his foreign-affairs expert Krishna Menon had no desire for a greater Indian empire. They discouraged both the Indian businessmen and labour unions which wanted to keep a hold on their smaller eastern neighbour. Pakistan retained an interest in the Muslim population of Arakan, but was keen to avoid any further ethnic and religious conflicts that might compromise its bizarre set of borders. The huge land mass of the Indian subcontinent continued to exert its gravitational pull on Burma, like a monster planet influencing a satellite moon, but empire had given way to moral and economic suasion.
Also in 1948, true to tradition in the Buddhist world, the new Burmese country's president announced a purge of Burma's religious establishment to match the prime minister's political revolution. Continue...
The Cold War brought new violence to the end of empire; as the local struggles in Southeast Asia were now seen as a part of a global chain of conflicts between the two power blocs. Reduced in political might and fearing the spread of communism, the waning colonial powers - Britain, France and the Netherlands - redeployed the weapons of the Second World War in the guise of counter-insurgency campaigns in those Asian territories, where they retained a fragile hold. As a result the hopes for liberal democracy that had sustained for decades colonial nationalists and European liberals alike were largely dashed. The advocates of social revolution were now fighting for their lives.
In early June 1950, prime minister of Burma, U Nu, began a course of meditation, and retreated into meditation centre and vowed not to emerge until he had attained a certain stage in vipassana meditation.’Until then', he told his ministers, 'do not send for me even if the whole country is enveloped in flames. Continue...
Today besides Communist China, also India has common interests with Burma, not least of all due to separatist movements along there common border which dates to the end of WWII. Continue...
Still a contested area to date, it is worth considering these regions for a time because it was the stubborn resistance of their inhabitants and the aid they gave the Allied armies that were to be crucial in blocking the further advance of the Japanese. Continue...
Following WWII, and in contemporary Myanmar public discourse, just like in China today, individuals are referred to as belonging to a "national race", one of the country's many "national races". Continue...
Thailand and Laos Burma's old neighbours. Continue...
Following WWII, Japan developed new support for Burma next Myanmar. Continue...
S.E.Asian Powers: Sixteen years after the Cold War ended in East Asia , second-tier powers have started to shape the region. Its first try was the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), formed in 1993. But aside from serving up some great karaoke (seriously, you have not lived until you have seen Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in a leisure suit singing his own version of "Mambo No. 5," or former Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan in drag), the ARF was really just a talk shop. In the minds of some ASEAN states, the problem was U.S. participation. After all, if you want to talk about the big kid, you cannot do it while U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is playing the piano in the same room. The solution was the East Asia Forum (EAF), which explicitly excluded the United States . But that is faltering as well, for two reasons. First, U.S. allies Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand were all invited, allowing the United States to influence developments by proxy. Second, the United States is not the only entity that seeks to harness ASEAN's efforts for its own designs.The country that has been most successful at this is China , which has now engaged ASEAN on everything from security talks to free trade negotiations. But even this partial success is threatening to be undermined by yet another actor looking to jump into the Pacific playground: Russia. The Russian government on Thursday called on ASEAN to increase cooperation with one of Russia 's pet projects: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). While Russia 's grip on its Far East is weak, Moscow is well aware that a country that does not act aggressively in the region risks losing what access it has. Moscow 's interests also are not primarily in Asia; they are in Europe. So anything the Kremlin can do to tie up potential adversaries halfway around the world fits neatly into Russia 's strategy. In part, Russia hopes to strengthen its hand with a limited naval buildup in the Pacific, but just as critical are Moscow 's diplomatic efforts. Russia understands that when an organization is either dysfunctional or beyond one's grasp, it is best to pack it with as many anti-American players as possible and at least turn it into a loudspeaker for Kremlin propaganda.
With these thoughts in mind, Russia is hoping to lash the SCO, a onetime security group that now is shopping for a new raison d'etre, to as many countries that look askew at the United States as possible. Iran , of course, is high on the docket, with India and now the ARF and EAF bringing up the rear. It does not much matter to Moscow whether this makes these organizations more efficient (it will not), so long as the SCO can function as a platform for Russian political goals. To that end, the cash-rich Russian state is buying up Cambodia 's debt and planning a presidential visit to Indonesia in September. (Both are ASEAN members.) For the Chinese, who prefer a more functional and subtle arrangement, as well as the ASEAN states who formed these organizations so they could call the shots, Russia's manipulation of the situation is downright rude. But telling the Russians to stick it in their ear -- to say the least -- would violate not only the mild anti-American sentiment that has propelled their efforts thus far, but also the sense of inclusion to which most of the Asian groups aspire. The result is becoming a mishmash of a half dozen organizations, ostensibly formed for similar purposes, with strikingly similar member lists. If the groups keep growing, soon there will be only two that have any meaning. First is ASEAN itself, whichhas managed to implement some real economic integration that should not be scoffed at. The only other organization that shows much promise is the awkwardly named Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), a trade-oriented group that has begun to dabble in security issues. Originally mooted by the Japanese and Australians, APEC now has become Washington 's preferred vehicle for bending the region to its will. Unlike ASEAN -- which works by consensus -- or the World Trade Organization (WTO) -- in which every member has a veto -- APEC is voluntary. Any collection of countries can implement any economic deal without having to first appease objecting members, resulting in a race to liberalization instead of marathon negotiations with troublemakers. Considering the weaknesses of the WTO, the increasing politicization of the other groups and Asia 's perennial interest in trade, APEC could soon be the only forum left worth attending.
Above two satellite photos, showing the disappearance of villages and a buildup of army camps offer what researchers say is potential evidence of human rights abuses in Myanmar. Left, the same village on May 5, 2004, on the right, Feb. 23, 2007, with all structures removed. The images correspond with information provided by the Free Burma Rangers regarding December 2006 attacks at and near the Burmese village of Kwey Kee. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) says high resolution satellite photos show evidence of destroyed villages, forced relocations and a growing military presence in 25 sites across Karen state and surrounding areas. Project director Lars Bromley said the non-profit group looked at photos taken before and after reported attacks on ethnic minorities. He said 18 villages had almost entirely disappeared. Others had appeared near a military camp in what researchers concluded was a forced relocation.Currently, two separate areas in eastern Burma are awaiting new image collections. While confusing to some people when it comes to what now is called Myanmar, an overview is inplace.
