Word: maung
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...military leadership is almost universally despised since its ruthless suppression of what became known, in a variation on Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring, as the "Rangoon Fall." Western diplomats estimate that troops killed some 2,000 unarmed civilians in street clashes following the takeover by General Saw Maung, who took power in a coup last September. Since then, more students and other protesters have been arrested or shot. Government employees deemed sympathetic to the democracy movement are being purged from their jobs. Troops are everywhere, even in the compound of the Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma's holiest shrine. "They have stripped away...
...both Burma and Haiti last week, the key to a better life seemed as elusive as ever. Throughout Burma, troops loyal to the new military leader, General Saw Maung, Burma's fourth head of government in four months, bloodied demonstrators brave enough to continue protesting the resumption of military rule. In the days after the coup, the crack of rifles could be heard as soldiers fired from rooftops at people who had gathered outside the U.S. embassy. Many more were cut down at Sule Pagoda as thousands of people fled the onslaught, screaming when the soldiers lowered their rifles...
Burmese authorities claimed that 144 people were killed during the first three days, but the true death total probably surpassed 500. Horrified at the carnage, U.S. Ambassador Burton Levin called upon the Saw Maung regime to condemn the killing of protesters by its soldiers. The ambassadors of Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and West Germany remonstrated "in the strongest terms" with the Burmese government for its "defiance of respect for human rights...
...military regime shrugged off the warning. Saw Maung presided over a nine-member Cabinet, in which he claimed the pivotal portfolios of Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Defense Minister. Replying to a request by opposition leaders for a meeting, Saw Maung was noncommittal, though he did promise "free and fair general elections" and a speedy transition to nonmilitary rule "as soon as peace and tranquillity are restored...
...Burmese were likely to believe him. For one thing, the new regime flatly ordered striking government employees to return to work by Oct. 3 or face dismissal, hardly the sign of an accommodating approach by the country's new rulers. For another, Saw Maung, 59, is a faithful follower of Ne Win, 78, who is strongly suspected of continuing to pull the strings behind the scenes ever since his resignation last July. The Burmese have not forgotten that Ne Win also promised elections, soon after he seized power in a 1962 coup, and that he never delivered on the commitment...