The Embassy of the United States in Yangon represents the official diplomatic mission of the American government in

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, Joh ...

(Burma), provides assistance to

American citizens Citizenship of the United States is a legal status that entails Americans with specific rights, duties, protections, and benefits in the United States. It serves as a foundation of fundamental rights derived from and protected by the Constituti ...

and issues

visas Visa most commonly refers to: *Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company ** Visa Debit card issued by the above company ** Visa Electron, a debit card ** Visa Plus, an interbank network *Travel visa, a document that allows ...

to foreign nationals, for the purposes of visiting and immigration.

Location

The American Embassy was formerly located in Downtown Yangon, on Merchant Street between 33rd Street and 34th Street, facing the Independence Monument park and

Yangon City Hall Yangon City Hall ( my, ရန်ကုန်မြို့တော်ခန်းမ; YCH) is the city hall of Yangon, the largest city of Myanmar, and the seat of the city's administrative body, Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC). The bu ...

on the other side of the park.

Sule Pagoda The Sule Pagoda ( my, ဆူးလေဘုရား; ) is a Burmese Buddhist stupa located in the heart of downtown Yangon, occupying the centre of the city and an important space in contemporary Burmese politics, ideology and geography. Accord ...

was one block north on the west side of the park. The building was formerly a Bank in a colonial-era structure. In August 2007, the embassy moved to new premises further from Downtown, because of security concerns at the old site. From 2001 to 2005, as a consequence of the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

, roadblocks and security barriers were placed in front the building, to seal off traffic. The new embassy site, located on University Avenue Road in Yangon's

Kamayut Township Kamayut Township ( my, ကမာရွတ် မြို့နယ်, ; also spelt Kamaryut Township) is located in the north central part of Yangon. The township comprises ten wards, and shares borders with Hlaing township in the north, Hlaing ...

, facing

Inya Lake Inya Lake ( my, အင်းလျားကန်, ''ʔīnyā kǎn'' ; formerly, Lake Victoria) is the largest lake in Yangon, Burma (Myanmar), a popular recreational area for Yangonites, and a famous location for romance in popular culture. Locat ...

, was reportedly constructed at the cost of $60 million USD.

Controversy

According to

WikiLeaks cables The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began on Sunday, 28 November 2010 when WikiLeaks began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates, embassies, and ...

, the embassy funded some of the civil society groups in Burma that forced the government to suspend a controversial Chinese

Myitsone Dam The Myitsone Dam ( my, မြစ်ဆုံ တာတမံ ; 'Confluence Dam') is a large dam and hydroelectric power development project which was planned to be built in northern Myanmar (also known as Burma). The proposed construction site i ...

on the

Irrawaddy river The Irrawaddy River ( Ayeyarwady River; , , from Indic ''revatī'', meaning "abounding in riches") is a river that flows from north to south through Myanmar (Burma). It is the country's largest river and most important commercial waterway. Origi ...

. According to media reports citing documents published by Germany's

Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

in 2010, the embassy is the site of an electronic surveillance facility used to monitor telephones and communications networks, run jointly by the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

and

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

group known as

Special Collection Service The Special Collection Service (SCS), codenamed F6, is a highly classified joint U.S. Central Intelligence Agency–National Security Agency program charged with inserting eavesdropping equipment in difficult-to-reach places, such as foreign em ...

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Myanmar–United States relations

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...