Burma: History

Burma was unified by Burman dynasties three times during the past millennium. The first such unification came with the rise of the Bagan (Pagan) Dynasty in 1044 AD, which is considered the "Golden Age" in Burmese history. During this period, Theravada Buddhism first made its appearance in Burma, and the Bagan kings built a massive city with thousands of pagodas and monasteries along the Irrawaddy River. The Bagan Dynasty lasted until 1287 when Mongol invaders destroyed the city. Ethnic Shan rulers, who established a political center at Ava (near Mandalay), filled the ensuing political vacuum for a short time.

In the 15th century, the Taungoo Dynasty succeeded again in unifying under Burman rule a large, multi-ethnic kingdom. This dynasty, which lasted from 1486 until 1752, left little cultural legacy, but expanded the kingdom through conquest of the Shans. Internal power struggles and the cost of protracted warfare led to the eventual decline of the Taungoo Dynasty.

The final Burman royal dynasty, the Konbaung, was established in 1752 under the rule of King Alaungpaya and lasted until the fall of King Thibaw to Britain in 1885. Like the Taungoo Kings, the Konbaung rulers focused on warfare and conquest. Wars were fought with the ethnic Mons and Arakanese, and with the Siamese. The Burmese sacked the Siamese capital of Ayuthaya in 1767. This period also saw four invasions by the Chinese and three devastating wars with the British.

The British began their conquest of Burma in 1824, expanding their holdings after each of the three wars. At the end of the third war in 1885, the British gained complete control of Burma, annexing it to British India.

A group of Burmese nationalists known as the “30 Comrades,” led by General Aung San, joined the Japanese forces in driving out the British at the outbreak of World War II. However, the Burmese Army switched sides in mid-1945 and aided U.S. and British forces in their drive to Rangoon against the Japanese. After the war, the Burmese, with General Aung San at the helm, demanded complete political and economic independence from Britain. The British Government acceded to these demands. A constitution was completed in 1947 and independence granted in January 1948. General Aung San was assassinated with most of his cabinet before the constitution went into effect.

During the constitutional period from 1948 to 1962, Burma had a democratic, parliamentary government. However, the country suffered widespread conflict and internal struggle. Constitutional disputes and persistent division among political and ethnic groups contributed to the democratic government's weak hold on power. In 1958, Prime Minister U Nu accepted military rule temporarily to restore political order. The military stepped down after 18 months.

In 1962 General Ne Win led a military coup, abolishing the constitution and establishing a xenophobic military government. Under his “Burmese Way to Socialism,” he established socialist economic policies that had devastating effects on the country's economy and business climate. In 1974 Ne Win established the Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP), the sole political party allowed in the country.

On November 25, 1974, former UN Secretary General U Thant died in New York. His body was flown back to Rangoon, where Ne Win had ordered that he be buried without any official honors. On the day of his funeral, December 5, tens of thousands of Burmese came out to pay their respects. Student demonstrators took U Thant’s coffin and paraded through the streets before the demonstrators buried him on the site of the former Rangoon University Students Union. Demonstrations and anti-government speeches continued until December 11, when government troops stormed the campus, killing several students and taking away U Thant’s coffin to bury it near the Shwedagon Pagoda. Riots broke out in Rangoon and the government declared martial law in order to crush the student demonstrations. Student protests that broke out in subsequent years were also similarly suppressed.

In March 1988, student-led demonstrations broke out in Rangoon in response to the worsening economic situation and evolved into a call for regime change. Despite repeated violent crackdowns by the military and police, the demonstrations increased in size and many in the general public joined the students. During mass demonstrations on August 8, 1988, military forces killed more than 1,000 demonstrators. At a rally following this massacre, Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of General Aung San, made her first political speech and assumed the role of opposition leader.

In September 1988, a group of generals deposed Ne Win's Burmese Socialist Program Party, suspended the constitution, and established a new ruling junta called the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). In an effort to "restore order," the SLORC sent the army into the streets to suppress the ongoing public demonstrations. An estimated additional 3,000 were killed, and more than 10,000 students fled into the hills and border areas. Many left the country.

The SLORC ruled by martial law until national parliamentary elections were held in May 1990. These elections were judged generally to be free and fair. The military made little effort to intimidate voters, erroneously assuming their preferred candidates would win. The results were an overwhelming victory for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, which won nearly 60% of the vote and 392 of the 485 seats, even though she was under house arrest at the time of the elections. The SLORC refused to honor the results or call the parliament into session, instead imprisoning many political activists and maintaining its grip on power.

The ruling junta changed its name to the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in 1997, but did not change its policy of autocratic control and repression of the democratic opposition. It continued to subject Aung San Suu Kyi to varying forms of detention and other restrictions on her movement, which it periodically lifted only to reinstate later. In May 2002, Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed to leave her home, and she subsequently traveled widely throughout the country, where she was greeted by large crowds. On May 30, 2003, Aung San Suu Kyi and a convoy of her supporters were attacked by a group of regime-affiliated thugs. Many members of the convoy were killed or injured, and others disappeared. Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of her party were detained.

In October 2004, hard-line members of the senior leadership consolidated their power by ousting Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt and removing him and his allies from control of the government and military intelligence apparatus. Following a sharp increase in fuel prices on August 15, 2007, pro-democracy groups began a series of peaceful marches and demonstrations to protest the deteriorating economic situation in Burma. The regime responded by arbitrarily detaining over 150 pro-democracy activists in August and September 2007, including Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi, both previously-imprisoned key figures in the 1988 demonstrations. On August 28, 2007, as popular dissatisfaction spread, Buddhist monks began leading peaceful marches. On September 5, 2007, security forces in the town of Pakkoku violently broke up demonstrations by monks, resulting in injuries and triggering calls for a nationwide response and a government apology for the incident.

Beginning on September 18, 2007, monks resumed their peaceful protests in several cities throughout the country. These marches grew quickly to include ordinary citizens, culminating in a large gathering of protestors in Rangoon on September 24. On September 26 and 27, the regime renewed its violent crackdown, shooting, beating, and arbitrarily detaining thousands of monks, pro-democracy activists, and onlookers. The regime confirmed the deaths of only 10 protestors. However, some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) estimated the number of casualties to be much higher, and in his December 7, 2007, report to the UN General Assembly, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar Paulo Sergio Pinheiro stated that there were over 30 fatalities in Rangoon associated with the September 2007 protests. In retribution for leading protest marches, monks were beaten and arrested, many monks were disrobed, and several monasteries were raided, ransacked, and closed. In addition to the more than 1,100 political prisoners whose arrests predate the crackdown, another thousand or more were detained due to their participation in the September 2007 protests.

Following the regime's 1993 proclamation of a seven-step roadmap to democracy and a subsequent national convention which convened intermittently, the regime in September 2007 concluded the process of "drafting" principles for the new constitution. Delegates to the convention were not allowed to debate freely, discuss, or attempt to amend the principles. In October 2007, the SPDC appointed 54 pro-regime persons to sit on a constitution drafting committee. The government declared the completion of the constitution drafting committee's work in February 2008, and announced that it would hold a national referendum on the constitution in May 2008, with multi-party elections planned for 2010. While the referendum law provided for a secret ballot, free debate was not permitted and activities considered "interfering with the referendum" carried a 3-year prison sentence. The government carried out the referendum in May 2008 amidst the aftermath of the humanitarian disaster caused by Cyclone Nargis. Although the referendum was rife with irregularities, the government announced that 92.48% of voters approved the constitution, with a 98% voter turnout. Independent observers do not consider those figures to be credible.

Cyclone Nargis hit Irrawaddy and Rangoon Divisions May 2-3, 2008. The storm devastated a huge swath of the Irrawaddy Delta region, wiping out entire villages, leaving an estimated 138,000 Burmese dead or missing, and affecting approximately 2.4 million people, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Burmese authorities were criticized for their initial reluctance to grant access to the affected region by international donors, though such access was granted in the ensuing months.

Starting in November 2008, the government imposed harsh sentences on large numbers of political prisoners it had arrested over the course of the previous year, including Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi. The trials were closed and did not appear to meet minimum standards of due process. The imprisoned activists were convicted, mainly in closed-door hearings, of unlawful association, illegally distributing print and video media, or generally destabilizing public security and the security of the state and were given lengthy sentences, some as long as 68 years.

On May 14, 2009, security forces took Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest to Insein prison and charged her and her two assistants with baseless crimes related to an uninvited U.S. citizen who swam to her home. Following a trial that was widely viewed as unfair, on August 11, 2009, Aung San Suu Kyi and her two assistants were convicted of violating the terms of her house arrest. The international community criticized her conviction and subsequent sentence to an additional 18 months of house arrest. The SPDC government released Aung San Suu Kyi on November 13, 2010, after more than 7 years' continuous detention. However, the government continues to hold an estimated 2,100 other political prisoners.

In March 2010, the government published widely criticized election and party registration laws to govern the conduct of elections planned for 2010. The laws annulled the results of the 1990 elections, barred political prisoners from party membership and parliamentary candidacy, and granted broad authority to the regime-appointed Union Election Commission to oversee and regulate political party activities. In April 2010, all active-duty cabinet ministers resigned their military commissions, reportedly to prepare for candidacy in the 2010 elections. Prime Minister Thein Sein was appointed head of the pro-government Union Solidarity and Development Party.

The country held its first elections in 20 years on November 7, 2010. The United States condemned the planning and the execution of the elections as neither free nor fair. The regime proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party won over three-quarters of elective parliamentary seats, although observers around the country reported widespread electoral malfeasance, including abuse of advance voting procedures. Per Burma's 2008 constitution, military appointees fill one-quarter of all parliamentary seats. The new, nominally civilian government took office on April 1, 2011, and the SPDC was dissolved. Insiders from the SPDC era fill almost all key positions at the national level and most at the state/region level. The current roles of the former top two SPDC leaders, Senior General Than Shwe and Vice Senior General Maung Aye, remain unclear.

Sources:
CIA World Factbook (September 2009)
U.S. Dept. of State Country Background Notes (August 2011)