Tell me about Burma/Myanmar, Veeky Forums

>(To clarify a further point, by the end of the 13th century, about 40-50% of north Burma's arable land was donated to the sangha, the clergy).

"Hey," say the Mongols. They reside in present-day china, but don't invade yet.

The new Pagan king Narathihapate looks real nervous. He's not quite sure how the whole 'king' thing works. Due to the lack of land to tax, the King runs short on the gold and power he needs to quell his perfidious nobility, and this period of weakness sparks a series of power explosions like says. There are a handful of rebellions, but some of them require more than one attempt to put down, and the attrition is starting to wear on the empire.

"Hey," the Mongols say again. "Give us your stuff.

"I don't know," says Narathihapate, and fights his rebellions for a few more years.

"Hey," the Mongols say again in 1273, this time a bit more loudly. "Give us your stuff, or we'll hit you."

Narathihapate refuses again, so the Yuan dynasty invades and expanded the borders of China to what's modern-day Yingjian, PRC. They also occupy a few other cities before they rest for a while.

In the meantime, the Kingdom practically explodes. All of Pagan's vassals revolt, breaking into several ethnically-based states. The Mongols decide they don't like the place much, and they don't even occupy the Irrawaddy delta, so now there's a massive power vaccum. They even retreat from the Burmese region not dissimilar to what had been happening pre-Pagan kingdom.

Then a lot more jockeying for power between shattered until about the 15th century, when two reasonable kingdoms called Ava and Hathawaddy show up. Ava is central Burma, Hanthawaddy is south. Arakan, a state who rebelled against the Pagans, is on the Border with India, and the rest are largely irrelevant Shan States. Ava and Hanthawaddy

i can't speak to very much of its history whatsoever, but i can speak to the japanese occupation of it and some of it's legacies if you are interested.

Sorry, my mistake; it was the Pyu who moved south, and the Mon who were original residents.

The Pyu have a Tibetic language group, according to Bradley's 2002 work on the subject.

>Ava and Hanthawaddy...

Decide to have it out because Ava wants the Pagan Empire back, and they both fight eachother in the Forty Years' War. Despite the aggressive strategy of Ava, there was no substantial gain, and they pack it in for 10 years (this is part of the war. You would imagine they would call it the thirty years' war). Then they go back to fighting eachother properly and nobody really wins again. The year is 1424.

They basically call it off for a hundred years. Hanthawaddy goes back to trading down the Irrawaddy with the Indians and Arakan.

Suddenly, the group of Shan States to the north on the border with China decide not to be so irrelevant. They pick a fight with Ava, who went a bit hard throughout the war and is now collapsing, and win. They look real good to dominate northern Burma. In the centre of Burma, the Taungoo step up to the plate at the end of the 15th century. They were a former vassal of Ava, and set about eating their lands and generally conquering everything, which, now that I think about it, seems to be the theme of this Burmese historical narrative.

At the same time, the Portuguese conquer Malacca. In the distance; 'Rule Britannia' plays loudly, but nobody in Burma can hear it yet, so that's okay.

The Taungoo king Tabinshwehti pushes southwards, where he takes by surprise and destroys the previously-affluent kingdom of Hanthawaddy. He gains control over this entire area, where Ava never had, and with the trade dynamic of the south-east-Asia erring in favour of the Irrawaddy Delta, this probably (probably) gave him the resources he needed to fight the Shan States. He definitely moves his capital to the southern city of Bago. Tabinshwehti also picks a fight with Arakan, and it doesn't go so well for him - he is assassinated after losing. His brother Bayinnaung is an absolutely spiffing general and promptly hammers the Shan states, conquering through modern-day Laos and Cambodia to the border with Vietnam in 1580.

Do I really have to go to reddit for some decent history threads? I've never actually used reddit before.

pretty much a failed state, and it wasnt only the muslims, every single ethnic group there fucking hates the government

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_conflict_in_Myanmar

Burma is the homeland of the mongoloid race, indo europeans back to Bangladesh

What are interesting historical place to go there? form what I seen the place looks pretty similar to Thailand

buddhist temples always look like heaven on Earth

"Yo Chang, remember that one time we have to run away from Communist China but can't joing Chiang in Taiwan, so we and entire army divisions of the ROC crossed into Burma, and when the Burmese told us to GTFO, we took over one of their states and put the minorities there to work tending Opium fields which we sold to the international drug trade to fund our continued war versus the communists, launching offensive after offensive into Yunnan for most of the 50s, but then we also fought the Burmese and contributed to local uprisings by giving them guns and money so they keep the Burmese busy and finally Burma was pissed off so they actually allied with the Communists in China and BTFO us, but then only 4000 of us managed to evacuate while the rest of us became drug lords across Southeast Asia?

Man, that was fucking rad."

So, Burma at this point (1580) is the Taungoo and Arakan, against the coast to the west, who is still holding out badass-style against the powerful Taungoo. In fact, the whole of Southeast Asia is basically Taungoo. Still under Bayinnaung, Ayutthaya (a state in current Lan Na, Manipur (a state in india) and most of current-day Thailand is added. They do eventually end up crumbling a bit after Baiyunnaung's death, but they even beat up the Portuguese and Siam a few times at the start of the 17th century. That's not bad, honestly. Their prominent feature is their abolishment of chieftainships, replacing them with governors, and their secular trade and administrative reforms.

It all goes to shit towards the end of that century, though. Remember the Mon? They're not cool being ruled over by a bunch of assholes that aren't Mon.

And just at around that time, the British arrive. To be fair, they arrived much earlier in India, but they've only just looked over here. They have guns. Lots of them.

"Hey," say the Mon.

"What's all this then," reply the British.

Sensing an opportunity to destablise things and gain influence, they give guns to the Mon. The Mon in turn launch a rebellion in Lower Burma, and at the same time Lan Ma (Northern thailand) rebels. Still, somehow, Tuangoo survives, despite having lost lower Burma to the then-restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom. It would continue to exist in various forms throughout its death throes; but this was the end of the Tuangoo state. In 1759, King Alaunpaya defeated the Hanthawaddy, British AND French (who were, additionally, providing firearms to the Hanthawaddy), seized much of Laos in a war with Siam (Thailand and Cambodia). They even beat up the Chinese, who invade four times.

>meanwhile, in Thailand...

Ayutthaya are a bunch of Thai guys who used to be under the Taungoo. They gained freedom when perfidious Anglo came to jostle with the Burmese, and they've started re-organising themself too.

You're good at this user, keep 'em coming

>someone actually knowing about Burmese history and explaining it
neat

Ayutthaya, sensing perhaps that the Burmese are occupied fighting off FOUR FUCKING CHINESE INVASIONS, invade up the coastline and retake the territories that used to be Lan Na (which had been Burmese for nearly 200 years). They fight one, two, three, four, five, SIX wars over the next hundred years over these territories, but they're all stalemates, because fighting in the jungle is shit and hard and you can only fight for like half of the year (see: the first and second Vietnam Wars).

That's in the future for now. Suffice it to say they joust for power periodically. After Tuangoo's successful defence against FOUR FUCKING CHINESE INVASIONS, and their present inability to reclaim Lan Na, they decide to look elsewhere for clay. It's in the West! Guess who's getting what's coming to them! It's Arakan, who were relaxing not conquering anyone and happily trading with the British and Indians. Arakan, Manipur (again) and Assam, an area of eastern India, are taken by 1817.

Guess who that gives the Burmese a common border with.

"What was that noise?" Asked the British, having just finished subjugating a majority of the Indian subcontinent.

"Nothing," replied Tuangoo. "Don't look over here."

The British accepted this and went back to beating up whatever bits of India were not under company rule. It took them seven years to realise they'd been tricked.

"Wait a moment," the British said, in 1824, standing up. "Wait a moment!"

The first Anglo-Burmese war smashed through Burmese defenses and seized Manipur and Assam, as well as some other stuff. They thought this was plenty fine for about 25 years (and remember, Burma is still fighting wars with Ayutthaya), and then Rangoon and Lower Burma were seized in 1852 in the second Anglo-Burmese War.

Whatever's left of the dynasty (which by now is actually not the Tuangoo dynasty and has not been for some time) is eaten by the Anglos in 1885 as a response to the consolidation of French Indochina.

fug
>They even retreat from the Burmese region, leaving it in a not dissimilar state to what had been happening pre-Pagan kingdom.

english is hard

The British set up a cricket pitch in Rangoon and call it the capital. (Not really, it's just their administrative hub.) Resistance in the north takes place until about 1890, to which the British decide to employ a cool strategy of burning jungle villages full of innocent people to the ground to stop insurgents from hiding amongst them. Stop me if you've heard that strategy before, Americans.

Under the British rule, things went pretty badly if you were Burmese. But at least the economy was consolidated and stable, right?

Probably. The Suez Canal opened in 1869. Suddenly, western markets realised there was a shitload of cheap labour, shallow-water trade infrastructure, spices and silk in Burma that they could suddenly acquire. The price of local rice soared so much that people couldn't afford it. Also hurting was the 'Chettiar' system - chettiars were basically local loan sharks that farmers had to borrow money from to cultivate new land; mostly so they could grow rice to sell. Their loans had exploitative interest rates, which often resulted in them being kicked off their land.

Throughout this period, as the above might suggest, the money grew, but all the power remained in the hands of the British. Government and Public Offices were nearly all held by whites, political association between Bamars was banned, and the people largely failed to reap the rewards.

>About the Bamars:
Remember the Mon again? They're now Bamars. Don't ask me when it happened (because it had been slowly changing culture for some time), it just did. Most people living in the Irrawaddy delta are Bamars now. This is the end of the section about the Bamars.

Anyway, there's not much more about ancient history that I can tell you. I would do a piece about the contemporary history of Burma, but maybe later, because I've got to go.

>contemporary history of Burma
Bump because i am interested in this. Too much biased informations about what happened in there.

I always assumed it was kind of a shithole back in the day since in Anna and the King of Siam, being sent to Burma was apparently the equivalent of a death sentence.

You're in luck, I'm back and the thread's not dead so away we go.

So, to recap so far:

>Bamars chilling out being subjects to British Rule
>Economy's okay but only if you white boi
>Borders China to the north-east, and French Indochina to the southeast.

A huge amount of Indian sepoys and labourers arrive in Burma during Colonial rule. They fill every role from soliders (obviously) to English teachers. Rangoon, in its capacity as the English capital in the area, becomes a great hub for trade, provided again you are not Burmese.

Unsurprisingly, the Burmese don't particularly appreciate the fact that you can't be a Burmese person in Burma. They also don't like the British, who stink of meat and disrespect Burmese culture; like not taking their shoes off when they come inside (no, really). They also REALLY don't like the British getting rid of the King of Burma, Prince Thibaw of the Konbaung Dynasty. The Government of India (to whom Burma was annexed to) also threw the Buddhist religion out the window, install Christian missionaries, founded secular schools, and removed the Buddhist religion from the state. I guess at least now whoever's in charge doesn't have to give stuff to the church any more to ensure a good reincarnation.

>A note about the Konbaung Dynasty:
Now that I actually have time to point this out, the Konbaung are the continuation of the Toungoo; who were technically replaced by the British-backed Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom, but never really died until the Brits ate their land and started ruling. So you can sort of say the Konbaung are the Toungoo state, but not the Toungoo Dynasty. It's probably easier to call them Burmese at this point.

Again, this was deeply, deeply unpopular for a variety of reasons that are self-evident.

The British response to the aforementioned violence was to basically continue in the manner similar to the 'strategic hamlet' style by the United States in their war in Vietnam (and also by the Rhodesians during their bush war against African Guerrillas).

This was not, however, summoning spectral princes of Denmark. The violence was predominately in the north; so basically the British just burned villages to the ground and removed families who caused trouble to the south. Although Kangaroos were not in vogue, there were plenty of Kangaroo courts to 'convict' disloyal Burmese as criminals.

The conflict continued to be fueled by Indians taking jobs, the British repression, and the relative immunity of guerilla warfare, who were largely headed up by former Royal (Burmese) Army officers. The violence and poverty that permeated the country gave it the reputation that suggests, Burma was not a very pleasant place to be. The year is 1900.

The turn of the century led several very interesting things to happen. Firstly was the rise of an independence movement. An association named the YMBA, or the young men's Buddhist associations. Yes, this is analogous to the thing the Village People sung about. Only difference is it's the only kind of association allowed under colonial law; a 'religious' one. Naturally it spreads nationalist dissent.

The second was first world war - which didn't affect Burmese quite as much as it did the Indians, but they were still pressed into fighting in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and the middle-east against the Turks. This only heightens questions of autonomy within the empire.

Meanwhile, at the Versailles treaty, members of the French socialist party agigate for civil rights for French Indochinese. Among them is a Vietnamese man called Nguyễn Tất Thành, better known by his later name, Hồ Chí Minh. (Here's a picture. loc.gov/pictures/item/2005684873/ )

Very informative posts, but the delivery is painfully reddit

thank you. I have never used reddit once, but I will not stop making history mildly engaging as this is a brief account with no sources provided and should not be considered too seriously. In short, eat shit

Among the upper classes of Burmese society shoot up a group of educated men who managed to study law in London. They basically come back with dangerous new ideas for the British, ideas like freedom. And rights, and shit.

Hilariously, in 1911, there's an Irish Catholic called Laurence Carroll who becomes a critic of the government vocally. He's tried twice for sedition and sentenced once under the lesser crime of 'insult', though nobody seems to know what happened.
>When you're so assblasted about the English that you shave your head and turn into a monk to go fight them on the other side of the planet

In 1920 there's a strike among these students after a piece of legislation is introduced that makes it harder for poor people to get into schools. Further strikes against colonial taxes in major regional hubs, and prominent activists were usually also monks (seeing as how they were the only people the British couldn't really mess up too badly). One of them, an Arakan man named Seinda, will be very important later.

By the 30's, things are incredibly violent. Dobama Asiayone (tr: "We Burmans Association") becomes a popular, underground movement. in '36, two student union leaders are expelled for refusing to say who wrote an article critical of a senior university administrator in their university-approved magazine. A general strike takes place by university students in response. The British take the hint by 1937 and seperate Burma from British India, granting them a new constitution with an elected assembly. A series of general strikes were ordered in 1938; in Rangoon, student protestors were charged by British mounted police, and in Mandalay province, 17 die after police opened fire on protestors.

You're typing. Why do you have to write this like a crash course script/be so discursive when you could just greentext it if you aim for comedy?

quit bitching dummy

I like the information and appreciate your posts but it hurts to read it

I'm not even the guy posting, i just think your acting awfully dickish for someone who hasn't posted a single spec of information about Burma.

>Stop having fun
no

So things are not going well. When the Japanese declare war on the English, things actually improve; or at least, the colonial authorities come down so hard on all dissent that the question of getting independent is over.

In 1942 the second Prime Minister of Burma, U Saw ('U' being an honorific title) was arrested by the British for communicating with the Japanese. The Japanese, as they did in Vietnam, the Phillipines Indonesia and the remainder of Indochina, promised that they would liberate southeast Asia from imperialism. Some Burmese, like the Communist Party of Burma, founded in 1939, harnessed the war as an opportunity for liberation. They believed the Japanese narrative; however it became apparent from the accounts flowing out of occupied French Indochina from '42 forward that this was anything but the case. The Japanese were even worse than the British, with press gangs until death being quite common among 'liberated' villagers.
>I could actually write a fucking thesis on Japanese war crimes, but they aren't relevant here.

Disillusionment among Burmese in Japanese-occupied Burma saw Communist and Socialist leaders called for temporary co-operation with the British. If anything, Burma during world war 2 softened the British administrator's opinion towards independence, if not for any other reason then Britain was incapable of keeping hold of its Asian possessions.

At the end of the war, Britain did not appreciate the momentary abandonment, and sought to try the leaders of the communist party for collaboration. Remember the two student union leaders who were expelled? Their names are Aung San and Ko Nu. Surprise; both are communists - the former is the founder of the party in Burma, and they are both members of an anti-facist freedom league (AFPFL). Both did some side-switching, but they're also revolutionary heroes, though, and can't really be tried without igniting more unrest.

>appaeal to accomplishment
>types like a mediocre normie
>indignant when his gibberish is pointed out

Whatever. The British let the matter go, restore a British governor, and delayed discussion of independence while they rebuilt the country. The installation of another governor after the first one's tenure ended led to the striking of Police in Rangoon. It soon evolved into what was all but a general strike, but the new Governor, Sir Rance, calls a meeting with Aung San and invites him and several other key AFPFL figures to join a council for managing Burma.

At this point in 1947, there's also a split between the CPB and Aung San's socialists in the AFPFL, which they are both members of. The CPB are expelled. They'll be back later.

The council began negotiations for independence with the Britain's Attlee government, eventually sealing the deal in 1947. Aung San also manages to come to some form of agreement for an ethnically diverse, singular nation of 'Burma' with various minorities that aren't Bamar (the people who live in the South). A rebellion breaks out in Aarakan led by U Seinda as a result of the agreement, which, as you may have noticed, doesn't feature the Communists. Conservative members of the AFPPL are also not particularly pleased with this - one of them is U Saw, the man who was arrested for collaborating with the Japanese. He's been detained for 4 years in Uganda while the war was on. He refuses to sign the agreement with Attlee on the grounds that he doesn't think they should be negotiating with the various states that existed before it and are being acknowledged/represented. If someone wanted to know how Burma is so fractious ethnically, start here.

U Saw comes pretty close to being the first Prime Minister for an independant Burma, but the country's first elections returned utterly overwhelming results for Aung San and his Socialists. In response to this, U Saw has Aung San and cabinet members assassinated out of the blue. With guns sold to them by British Officers, a recent expose revealed. Really makes you think.

So now Burma is called the Republic of the Union is Myanmar, and it's is headed up by a group of Socialists lead by a man called Nu. The conservatives aren't happy, and the Communists aren't happy,

Burma are so butthurt over colonial policy that they do not become a member of the commonwealth, despite possessing a bicameral parliament like other Commonwealth nations.

Meanwhile, non-Bamar buddies are not particularly happy.

>A note about Burman ethnicities
It's a muddy list. We've been over a few. There are 135 recognised by the Burmese government, grouped into 8 major categories: the relevant ones to our narrative are Bamar (68%), Shan, (9%), Karen (7%), Rakhine (3.5%). As I mentioned, most people in Burma assumed Bamar identity over time as an expression of pan-Burmese identity.

A largely fragmented economy with large amounts of political and social disorder as different groups struggled for progress in the Federal Parliament (combined with the instability of the recently-assassinated hero Aung San) led to plenty of unrest. The AFPFL civilian government was extremely weak and unpopular, especially after U Nu had tried to force Buddhism to become the state religion. The Shan and Kayah (another random minority, under .5% population) agitated for secession from the Union under the terms of the 1947 Constitution. Shan leaders formed an armed opposition in the early 60's. The government was also quite corrupt and tended to benefit the rich. Additionally, in the late 40's, there had been an confrontation between ethnic segments of the army; restructuring by a General called Ne Win failed to fix the issue, and made the government weaker.

In 1958, the AFPFL finally snapped. Nu barely passed a vote of no confidence; in return, Ne Win was put in place as a caretaker while new elections were planned in 1960. Nu won them; again with a slim minority.

In 1962, the above and many more justifications were provided by Ne Win to launch a coup.

At this point I don't want to say 'nothing happened but military coup for 25 years.' Hopefully I've highlighted some of the roots for the ethnic conflict. There's a lot more of it in the next 40 years, but I'm exhausted and I get the feeling that people might appreciate a break.

If there's more serious discussion of what the fuck happened to Burma tomorrow, then I can probably contribute some more. Otherwise, it's been nice.

>t. man whose great-grandfather was a Colonial Administrator in Burma

Greentexting is fucking awful.

>whinges about typing
>manages to rearrange "appeal" into some kind of Diablo mini-boss

If you're gonna bitch about language on Veeky Forums (of all places), try not make a meal of 3 word greentexts.

Good read, thanks for that.

...

>ask shittit about non-American/non-European history
kek

dead threads with 1-2 replies (if ever)

Thanks heaps for the info user

Do you have any knowledge or insights about the wonky shit the Military government did?
Things like changing which side of the road to drive on because the left side is luckier?
Or how one day all 100, 50, and 30 dollar notes were made non-legal tender completely destroying all lower and middle class savings over night?

Posts like this are why i come to Veeky Forums

Thanks for all your work, much appreciated

A bunch of ignorant savages civilized by the British empire, which immediately set up a savage dictatorship as soon as the Brits left

t. perfidious Anglo

The Junta are very unusual, but this is also southeast asia we're talking about. Thai people don't like being patted on the head and it's considered to be extremely disrespectful because that's where the life-force resides. Not removing your shoes is also really rude, and even joking about the monarchy is a criminal offence.

You're referring to the actions of Ne Win (literally the same General who decided the AFPFL was fucking too crazy to run the country), who died in 2002 aged 91. When he turned 75 in 1985 he casually demonetized 50 and 100-kyat notes and introduced a 75 kyat banknote (supposedly) for his birthday. They did have a 25 kyat banknote already, in case you were wondering. So then, they had:

>1, 5, 10, 25, 75

They also introduced 15 and 35-kyat notes, which seeing as how they already have 5, 10, and 20 were nuttier than squirrel shit, and then like a year later in 1987 the Junta basically decided that 25, 35 and 75-kyat notes weren't worth anything as you said. Ne Win was as superstitious as many southeast asians, so about a year later he introduced 45 and 90-kyat notes (supposedly representing his favourite number, 9, which both are divisible by.) So then, they had:

>1, 5, 10, 45, 90

People basically rationalised that the 10-kyat note was the 'safest' note, and that the government would never demonetize it; to this day it's quite uncommon to get a 1 or 5 kyat note.

Some people (like economists) speculate that this was done as a mechanism to keep people poor. The ramifications were pretty serious, though - in response to having their tuition savings wiped out, in 1988 a there were massive popular democratic protests by poor students in Rangoon. Monks joined quickly soon after, though it pretty much spread to a general strike and protest. It's also where Aung San Suu Kyi came from, popularity wise. This basically snowballs into a scenario by March of 1988 where students marched demanding an end to one-party rule. It didn't end there.

>forgot to include the 20 value in both those green lists
You know it's fucking stupid when you can't even keep track of which banknotes they do and don't have in circulation.

Anyway, the protests basically continued under huge repression, but Nw Win resigned in July as they continued through Mandalay and other large Burmese cities. Calls for multi-party democracy were eventually acknowledged, and things came to a loggerhead on 8/8/88 (again, a 'lucky' day of numerology; you might see where Ne Win's batshittery comes from). A string of protests were all planned to happen at once, co-ordinated by supressed student movies and underground activists, most of whom were followers of Teachers and Monks, who the government had trouble cracking down on. Not too dissimilar to the problem the British had. In Rangoon newspapers were also basically shilling the issue as fast as they could; neighbourhood-watch style organisations secretly armed themselves as a sort of defensive militia and barricaded their neighbourhoods in readiness for the 8th.

Now even soldiers were joining in the protests. In the week leading up the the 8th, about 10,000 people gathered outside one of the city's largest Pagodas (a temple sort of thing) to burn effigies of Ne Win and the governor he had put in place after he stepped down, Sein Lwin (who was deeply unpopular, and known as 'The Butcher of Rangoon'). They lined the fires with demonetized banknotes.

The junta mobilised troops and declared martial law on the 3rd. When the 8th rolled around and a massive procession converged into Downtown Rangoon, the government opened fire and were responded to with molotovs, rocks, swords and guns. Nobody can agree on how many casualties there were; generally it's about 350 (100 killed, 250 wounded).

Then, suddenly, on the 12th of August, after days of street fighting, Lwin just resigns.

People are really fucking confused and stop rioting. For about a week. The figure put into the office of governor is Ne Win's friend, a legal scholar called Dr. Maung. Things start getting really out of hand in late August when nationwide demonstrations start happening. In some french-revolutionary-tier shit, armed gangs of demonstrators under the rule of 'democratic committees' start fingering people they see as wrongdoers and killing them.

Then, finally, Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the assassinated Aung San, gets sick of being under house arrest as she has been for many years, and goes outside to speak to people.

It's really here that she becomes the figure she (may) have been in Western media for the past fifteen years. She urges nonviolent resistance as Gandhi did; basically just civil disobediance. Previously deposed democratically elected leader Nu (the socialists man from 1962) comes back from hiding to participate in the political scene.

There's a great period of hopeful democracy, and after a lot of horse trading with the Junta, finally everyone agrees that Elections take place in 1988. The socialist party (who have, de facto, been thrown out by the military) say they're going to be giving everyone elections under the Junta. The people reply for them to fuck off and demand the dismissal of the Junta first. Aung San Suu Kyi is set to sweep everyone away, predictably. Violence grows. Violence grows a lot in Burma, but now it REALLY grows. Groups of soldiers agitate protestors into doing dumb shit, then blindly fire into crowds, and nobody could agree on an interim government. About 3,000 people are dead by the end of September...

And on the 18th of that month in 1988, the military take back power from any sort of privisional government again. By the end of 1988, 10,000 soldiers and protestors are killed, with many more 'missing'.

So yeah, fun times in Burma. Every time they get close to democracy the military fuck it up.

neat thread. Ty Burmafag

you're a moron