Word: burma
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Just beyond the gaze of the golden Buddha in the Eindawya pagoda in Mandalay, the spiritual heart of Burma, dozens of soldiers slouched around the courtyard, propping their rifles against the stone balustrades. Outside the temple gates, more troops manned barbed-wire barricades. "Please leave," an army captain shouted last week to a group of tourists trying to photograph the Buddha. "You may come back when our security situation is right...
Rudyard Kipling notwithstanding, Mandalay has neither flying fishes nor even a bay; Burma's second city sits on an arid plain. For the clergy of the Phaya- gyi monastery, however, the dawn really did come up like thunder one morning last week as government troops raided the 206-year-old pagoda and arrested about 20 of its monks...
...consider the case of Myanmar (the new name for Burma). A military dictatorship refuses to honor the results of a free election, brutalizes opposition figures, harasses U.S. citizens and imposes a reign of terror on the populace...
IMAGINE if the Bolivian government subsidized coca farmers and then pressured the U.S. to allow the importation of processed cocaine. Imagine if Burma appealed to international law to get the U.S. to accept shipments of heroin...
Despite a sound trouncing in last May's elections, Burma's military junta has yet to move forward on its promise to cede control of the country, which it now calls Myanmar, to the "largest party." Last week it actually took a step backward. Citing "security reasons," government forces in Rangoon and Mandalay arrested six top leaders of the National League for Democracy, the opposition party that won 80% of the seats in the national legislature. The arrests came a week after the junta said it would release N.L.D. leader Aung San Suu Kyi if she agreed to leave...