Prelude

This is where I've posted news and reflections about past travels and am dusting it off in anticipation of leaving in early September. I'll be heading back to a clinic in Thailand, in a comfy town of about 100k persons 3km from the Burma border. Events in Burma will be far more important to my daily activities than those in Thailand, so I'm going to give a brief intro to the situation just across the border.

As for news, the best sites are www.mizzima.com and www.irrawaddy.org. (Irrawaddy often doesn't load the first time - just hit refresh and it should) The official paper is the New Light of Myanmar. It's complete BS, but amazing to read, especially in times of crisis as are possibly approaching (see below).

Here's a brief history of Burma. For a long time, hundreds of different ethnic groups lived there with distinct language, culture etc. It can be helpful to divide them into mountain tribes and valley tribes. The British, in their wisdom, drew a boundary around a bunch of them and picked one group, the Burmans (~40% of the population and valley people), and put them in charge. The British later left leaving the "country" of Burma to it's own rule. They had a few good years but it's been downhill since. In the early 60's they country became a military dictatorship run by superstitious nuts. Their goals seem to be limiting development, selling all national resources to surrounding countries at a discount, and killing all the mountain people. The latter are surviving because they are hard to find, resilient, and some of the larger groups have their own militias and maintain semi-autonomous states in opposition to the government.

The new "democratic" constitution was approved by the population a year or two ago, with reported 99% voter turnout and 92.5% voting in favor of it. If I remember correctly, under the new constitution 51% of parliment is given to the military, or something like that. Popular democratic leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is banned from running for office, and if that wasn't enough was recently given another 18 months of house arrest ensuring that she can't be involved in the elections supposedly occurring in 2010.

As if all this wasn't sufficient to protect the status quo, it seems the military is increasing their activities in the minority areas. More people have been fleeing into Thailand over the last month, and columns of government or government-aligned troops are heading to the mountains. As they push, minority militias seem to be reorganizing and preparing to push back. The minority ethic groups have been fighting each other as much as the government, but their are rumors of those groups forming alliances with one another. They are outnumbered, but tough and motivated -- these are the same Kachin and Arakhan who gained renown fighting with the Allied forces in WWII.

So, the stage is set for a possibly dramatic upcoming year in Burma. As international attention becomes more focused on the small nation, maybe if a flashpoint is reached this time there will be some positive change for the people of Burma.

A brief note about the name of the country. Before the British it wasn't a country. Then I think it became part of British India. On independence it became the Union of Burma which I think it remained until the mid 90's. The ruling generals changed the name to Myanmar. My understanding is that it's a more ethnically appropriate name, having something to do with the name of a pre-colonial kingdom. So that's the official name of the country. However, no one likes the generals, so most people outside of the State Dept., UN etc call the place Burma as an expression of disrespect.

Inside the country, it's irrelevant. People identify with their ethnic group. If you ask a Karen person 'what' they are, they will say Karen. To ask if they were Burmese would be highly offensive. If you ask where they are from, they will say Karen State or what the traditional name for their homeland is in their language. The discussion about the country's name is largely a matter of academic discussion for people far from there.