lonely-planet-myanmar-burma-11-edition

302HISTORY POST-COLONIAL BURMASAO HEARNHKAMPatricia Elliott’sThe WhiteUmbrella (www.whiteumbrella.com) is thefascinating truestory of Shanroyal Sao HearnHkam, wife ofBurma’s presidentand founderof the Shan StateArmy.elections to held in December 1960 and the charismatic U Nu regainedpower with a much-improved majority, partly through a policy of makingBuddhism the state religion. This, and politically destabilising movesby various ethnic minorities to leave the Union of Burma, led Ne Win toorder an army coup and abolish the parliament in March 1962.U Nu, along with his main ministers, was thrown into prison, wherehe remained until he was forced into exile in 1966. Meanwhile, Ne Winestablished a 17-member Revolutionary Council and announced that thecountry would ‘march towards socialism in our own Burmese way’, confiscatingmost private property and handing it over to military-run statecorporations.Nationalisation resulted in everyday commodities becoming availableonly on the black market, and vast numbers of people being thrown outof work. Ne Win also banned international aid organisations, foreign languagepublications and local, privately owned newspapers and politicalparties. The net result was that by 1967, a country that had been the largestexporter of rice in the world prior to WWII, was now unable to feed itself.R iots & Street ProtestsOpposition to Ne Win’s government eventually bubbled over into a strikeby oil workers and others in May 1974 and, later that same year, riotsover what was seen as the inappropriate burial of former UN secretarygeneral,U Thant in Yangon. Responding with gunfire and arrests, thegovernment regained control and doggedly continued to run the country– further impoverishing the people with successive demonetisations.In late 1981 Ne Win retired as president of the republic, retaining hisposition as chair of the Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP), thecountry’s only legal political party under the 1974 constitution. But hissuccessor, San Yu, and the government remained very much under theinfluence of Ne Win’s political will.Even though the Burmese standard of living was on a continual downwardspiral, it wouldn’t be until 1988 that the people again took to thestreets en masse, insisting that Ne Win had to go. Even the surprise retirementby Ne Win as BSPP chairperson in July 1988, and his advocatingof a multiparty political process, was insufficient to halt the agitation ofthe people. Public protests reached a climax on the auspicious date of8 August 1988 (8-8-88), after which the government steadily moved tocrush all opposition, killing an estimated 3000 and imprisoning more.Tens of thousands, mainly students, fled the country.Slorc Holds an ElectionIn September 1988, a military coup (widely thought to have had the blessingof Ne Win) saw the formation of the State Law & Order Restoration1947Having gainedindependence fromBritain and ralliedethnic groups to a 10-year deal where theycould secede fromBurma by 1958, AungSan and six colleaguesare assassinated byrivals.1948On 4 January thecountry gainsindependence as theUnion of Burma withU Nu as the primeminister; immediatelyit is destabilised byvarious ethnic andpolitical confl icts.FRANK CARTER/LONELY PLANET IMAGES ©1958A split in theAFPFL causesparliamentary chaos;U Nu barely survivesa no-confi dencevote and invitesGeneral Ne Win toform a ‘caretakergovernment’ whichlasts until 1960.» Independence Monument