All Burma Monks' Alliance
All Burma Monks' Alliance (abbreviated ABMA) is a coalition of monks in Myanmar, representing the All Burma Young Monks' Union, the Federation of all Burma Monks' Union, the Rangoon Young Monks' Union and the Sangha Duta Council of Burma. It was founded on 9 September 2007, at the start of the Saffron Revolution, after monks were brutalized at protests in Sittwe and Pakokku. ABMA made several key demands to the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), including a formal apology to the Sangha, a reduction on fuel and commodity prices, release of political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi, and dialogue with pro-democracy leaders for national reconciliation. On September 21 it escalated its demands, promising to "banish the common enemy evil regime from Burmese soil forever", which was met with a violent crackdown. Leaders such as U Gambira were imprisoned and tortured, while others became refugees or went into hiding. Outside of Myanmar, the ABMA supports refugee monks w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, John Wells explains, the English spellings of both Myanmar and Burma assume a non-rhotic variety of English, in which the letter r before a consonant or finally serves merely to indicate a long vowel: [ˈmjænmɑː, ˈbɜːmə]. So the pronunciation of the last syllable of Myanmar as [mɑːr] or of Burma as [bɜːrmə] by some speakers in the UK and most speakers in North America is in fact a spelling pronunciation based on a misunderstanding of non-rhotic spelling conventions. The final ''r'' in ''Myanmar'' was not intended for pronunciation and is there to ensure that the final a is pronounced with the broad a, broad ''ah'' () in "father". If the Burmese name my, မြန်မာ, label=none were spelled "Myanma" in English, this would b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Saffron Revolution
The Saffron Revolution ( my, ရွှေဝါရောင်တော်လှန်ရေး) was a series of economic and political protests and demonstrations that took place during August, September, and October 2007 in Myanmar. The protests were triggered by the decision of the national military government to remove subsidies on the sales prices of fuel. The national government is the only supplier of fuels and the removal of the price subsidy immediately caused diesel and petrol prices to increase by 66–100% and the price of compressed natural gas for buses to increase 500% in less than a week. The various protests were led by students, political activists, including women, and Buddhist monks and took the form of a campaign of nonviolent resistance, sometimes also called civil resistance. In response to the protests, dozens of protesters were arrested or detained. Starting in September 2007 the protests were led by thousands of Buddhist monks, and those protests we ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sittwe
Sittwe (; ; formerly Akyab) is the capital of Rakhine State, Myanmar (Burma). Sittwe, pronounced ''sait-tway'' in the Rakhine language, is located on an estuarial island created at the confluence of the Kaladan, Mayu, and Lay Mro rivers emptying into the Bay of Bengal. As of 2006 the city has 181,000 inhabitants. It is the administrative seat of Sittwe Township and Sittwe District. Etymology The name Sittwe, which literally means "the place where the war meets," is derived from the Burmese pronunciation of စစ်တွေ (pronounced ''Saittwe'' in Arakanese language). When the Burmese King Bodawpaya invaded the Mrauk U Kingdom in 1784, the Rakhine defenders encountered the Burmese force at the mouth of Kaladan river. In the ensuing battle, which was waged on both land and water, the Mrauk U forces were defeated. The place where the battle occurred came to be called ''Saittwe'' by the Rakhine, and colloquially as ''Sittwe'' by the Burmese. In early 1825, during the First ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pakokku
Pakokku ( my, ပခုက္ကူမြို့, ) is the largest city in the Magway Region of Myanmar. It is situated about 30 km north-east of Bagan on the Irrawaddy River. It is the administration seat of Pakokku Township , Pakokku District and Gangaw District. Pakokku Bridge is part of the India–Myanmar–Thailand Trilateral Highway and is the longest bridge in Myanmar. It is home of the Pakokku Airport. The city is the location of Computer University, Pakokku, Pakokku Education College, Technological University, Pakokku, and Pakokku University. Thiho Shin Pagoda (The Lord of Sri Lanka Pagoda), Shwe Ku Pagoda, Shwe Mothtaw Pagoda, Shwe Tant Tit, and Phaung Taw Oo Pagoda are famous pagodas in Pakokku. Pakokku is also the largest rice market city of Upper Myanmar. History Before British occupation, Pakokku was a small village and part of both Pakhangyi and Bagan districts. The British occupied Upper Burma on 29 November 1885. On 1 December 1887, British India Gove ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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State Peace And Development Council
The State Peace and Development Council ( my, နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ ; abbreviated SPDC or , ) was the official name of the military government of Burma (Myanmar) which, in 1997, succeeded the State Law and Order Restoration Council ( my, နိုင်ငံတော်ငြိမ်ဝပ်ပိပြားမှုတည်ဆောက်ရေးအဖွဲ့ that seized power under the rule of Saw Maung in 1988. On 30 March 2011, Senior General and Council Chairman Than Shwe signed a decree that officially dissolved the council. From 1988 to 1997, the junta was known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council ( my, နိုင်ငံတော် ငြိမ်ဝပ်ပိပြားမှု တည်ဆောက်ရေးအဖွဲ့, links=no; abbreviated SLORC or ), which had succeeded the Pyithu Hluttaw as a leg ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sangha (Buddhism)
Sangha is a Sanskrit word used in many Indian languages, including Pali meaning "association", "assembly", "company" or "community"; Sangha is often used as a surname across these languages. It was historically used in a political context to denote a governing assembly in a republic or a kingdom, and has long been used by religious associations including the Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs. Given this history, some Buddhists have said the tradition of the ''sangha'' represents humanity's oldest surviving democratic institution. In Buddhism, ''sangha'' refers to the monastic community of ''bhikkhu'' (monks) and '' bhikkhuni'' (nuns). These communities are traditionally referred to as the ''bhikkhu-sangha'' or ''bhikkhuni-sangha''. As a separate category, those who have attained any of the four stages of enlightenment, whether or not they are members of the monastic community, are referred to as the ''āryasaṅgha'' ("noble Sangha"). According to the Theravada school and Nichir ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Political Prisoner
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although numerous similar definitions have been proposed by various organizations and scholars, and there is a general consensus among scholars that "individuals have been sanctioned by legal systems and imprisoned by political regimes not for their violation of codified laws but for their thoughts and ideas that have fundamentally challenged existing power relations". The status of a political prisoner is generally awarded to individuals based on declarations of non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International, on a case-by-case basis. While such status are often widely recognized by the international public opinion, they are often rejected by individual governments accused of holding political prisoners, which tend to deny any bias in the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi (; ; born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021. She has served as the chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) since 2011, having been the general secretary from 1988 to 2011. She played a vital role in Myanmar's transition from military junta to partial democracy in the 2010s. The youngest daughter of Aung San, Father of the Nation of modern-day Myanmar, and Khin Kyi, Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, British Burma. After graduating from the University of Delhi in 1964 and St Hugh's College, Oxford in 1968, she worked at the United Nations for three years. She married Michael Aris in 1972, with whom she had two children. Aung San Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the 8888 Uprising of 8 August 1988 and became the General Secretary of the NLD, which she h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National League For Democracy
The National League for Democracy ( my, အမျိုးသား ဒီမိုကရေစီ အဖွဲ့ချုပ်, ; Abbreviation, abbr. NLD; Burmese abbr. ဒီချုပ်) is a liberal democratic political party in Myanmar (Burma). It became the country's ruling party after a landslide victory in the 2015 Myanmar general election, 2015 general election but was overthrown in a 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, military coup d'état in early 2021 following another landslide 2020 Myanmar general election, election victory in 2020. Founded on 27 September 1988, it has become one of the most influential parties in Myanmar's pro-democracy movement. Aung San Suu Kyi, the former State Counsellor of Myanmar, serves as its chairperson. The party won a substantial parliamentary majority in the 1990 Myanmar general election. However, the ruling State Peace and Development Council, military junta refused to recognise the result. On 6 May 2010, the party was declared illegal ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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U Gambira
Nyi Nyi Lwin (; born 19 June 1979), more widely known by his monastic name U Gambira ( my, ရှင်ဂမ္ဘီရ), is a former Buddhist monk, activist and a leader of the All-Burma Monks' Alliance, a group which helped lead the 2007 protests against Burma's military government. Following the protests, he went into hiding and published two editorials critical of the Burmese government in ''The Washington Post'' and ''The Guardian'' on 4 November 2007. He was arrested the same day. In November 2008, he was sentenced to 68 years in prison, including 12 years hard labour; the sentence was reduced to 65 years on appeal. Gambira reportedly protested his imprisonment by organising chanting with other imprisoned monks, boycotting his trial, and going on hunger strike. Human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also protested his imprisonment. Gambira was released during a mass pardon of prisoners on 13 January 2012 as part of the 2011–20 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Burmese Junta
Military rule in Myanmar (also known as Burma) lasted from 1962 to 2011 and resumed in 2021. Myanmar gained its independence from the British Empire in 1948 under the Burmese Independence Army, as a democratic nation. The first military rule began in 1958 and direct military rule started when Ne Win captured power through a coup d'état in 1962. Burma became a military dictatorship under the Burma Socialist Programme Party that lasted for 26 years, under the claim to save the country from disintegration. During this period there was some democratic landscape in the form of giving rights to the citizen to elect and to stand for election. For most of its independent years, the sovereign state has been engrossed in rampant ethnic strife and its myriad ethnic groups have been involved in one of the world's longest-running ongoing civil wars. It's also known as one of the most brutal nations of all time for its mass human rights violation. During this time, the United Nations and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Southern Ontario. With a population of 278,349 according to the 2020 census, Buffalo is the 78th-largest city in the United States. The city and nearby Niagara Falls together make up the two-county Buffalo–Niagara Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which had an estimated population of 1.1 million in 2020, making it the 49th largest MSA in the United States. Buffalo is in Western New York, which is the largest population and economic center between Boston and Cleveland. Before the 17th century, the region was inhabited by nomadic Paleo-Indians who were succeeded by the Neutral, Erie, and Iroquois nations. In the early 17th century, the French began to explore the region. In the 18th century, Iroquois land surrounding Buffalo Creek ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |