Union Of Burma (1948–1962)
The first fourteen years of independent Burma were marred by several communist and ethnic insurgencies. Prominent insurgent groups during this period include the Communist Party of Burma (CPB, "white flags") led by Thakin Than Tun, the Communist Party (Burma) ("red flags") led by Thakin Soe, the People's Volunteer Organisation (''Yèbaw Hpyu'') led by Bo La Yaung (a member of the Thirty Comrades), the Revolutionary Burma Army (RBA) led by communist officers Bo Zeya, Bo Yan Aung and Bo Yè Htut (all three of them members of the Thirty Comrades), and the Karen National Union (KNU). History Remote areas of northern Burma were for many years controlled by an army of Kuomintang (KMT) forces after the Communist victory in China in 1949. Burma accepted foreign assistance in rebuilding the country in these early years, but continued American support for the Chinese Nationalist military presence in Burma finally resulted in the country rejecting most foreign aid, refusing to join ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yangon
Yangon, formerly romanized as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar. Yangon was the List of capitals of Myanmar, capital of Myanmar until 2005 and served as such until 2006, when the State Peace and Development Council, military government relocated the administrative functions to the purpose-built capital city of Naypyidaw in north central Myanmar. With over five million people, Yangon is Myanmar's most populous city and its most important commercial centre. Yangon boasts the largest number of colonial-era buildings in Southeast Asia, and has a unique Downtown Yangon, colonial-era urban core that is remarkably intact. The colonial-era commercial core is centered around the Sule Pagoda, which is reputed to be over 2,000 years old. The city is also home to the gilded Shwedagon Pagoda – Myanmar's most sacred and famous Buddhist pagoda. Yangon suffers from deeply inadequate infrastructure, especially compared to other major cities in Sou ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term ''Cold war (term), cold war'' is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and Nuclear arms race, nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, Economic sanctions, embargoes, and sports diplomacy. After the end of World War II in 1945, during which the US and USSR had been allies, the USSR installed satellite state, satellite governments in its occupied territories in Eastern Europe and N ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Karen National Union
The Karen National Union (; abbreviated KNU) is a political organisation with an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), that claims to represent the Karen people of Myanmar. It operates in mountainous eastern Myanmar and has underground networks in other areas of Myanmar where Karen people live as a minority group. Some of the Karen, led primarily by the Karen National Union (KNU), have waged a war against the central government since early 1949. The aim of the KNU at first was independence. Since 1976 the armed group has called for a federal system rather than an independent Karen State. The Karen conflict is the second longest internal war in the world after the Dagohoy rebellion in the Philippines, having been waged for 85 years until 1829. History 1947 – 1959 The KNU was founded in 1947. Following Myanmar's independence in January 1948, KNU leaders instructed local organisers to establish local defence militias, collectively grouped under the Karen Na ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thirty Comrades
The Thirty Comrades () constituted the embryo of the modern Burmese army called the Burma Independence Army (BIA) which was formed to fight for independence from Britain. This was accomplished just before the majority of the Thirty Comrades returned with the invading Japanese Army initially through Southern Burma in December 1941. In April 1941, small groups of Burmese youth left Burma secretly to obtain military training to fight the British colonists in the struggle for independence. Their leader was Thakin Aung San and they were sent by the Dobama Asiayone ("We Burmans Association") with the intention to get assistance from Guangzhou. By a quirk of fate, however, they ran into the Japanese instead in Amoy and arrived in Japan later to be flown to occupied parts of Sanya, in order to receive military training from the Japanese Army. They were later moved to Formosa for security reasons and subsequently returned to Burma via Vietnam and Thailand with the Japanese. On 26 De ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thakin Soe
Thakin Soe (, ; 1906 – 6 May 1989) was a founding member of the Communist Party of Burma and a leader of the Anti-Fascist Organisation. He is regarded as one of Burma's most prominent communist leaders. Early life Soe was an ethnic Mon people, Mon and was born in Mawlamyine, Moulmein (present-day Mawlamyine). He worked for the Burmah Oil Company. Movement Before independence Soe joined the nationalist ''Dobama Asiayone'' ("Our Burma" Association) in 1930s. Soe together with Thakin H. N. Goshal, Ba Tin and other nationalists founded the Communist Party of Burma in 1939. Communist leaders Thakin Than Tun and Thakin Soe, and Socialist leaders Ba Swe and Kyaw Nyein and the Burma National Army (BNA) led by General Aung San founded the Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO) in August 1944 at a secret meeting of the CPB, the PRP and the BNA in Pegu. The AFO was later renamed the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League(AFPFL). Thakin Than Tun and Thakin Soe, while in Insein prison in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Communist Party (Burma)
The Communist Party (Burma) (), sometimes referred to as the Red Flag Communist Party (; RFCP), was a communist party in Burma. The party was formed after a more radical faction broke away from the Communist Party of Burma in 1946. In the same year, it began a protracted armed insurgency; first against British rule, then against the Burmese government. The party was led by Thakin Soe, a firebrand communist leader. In the 1970s, the party lost influence and was militarily defeated by 1978. Split The party emerged from a split in the Communist Party of Burma in February 1946. Thakin Soe, a former guerrilla leader, had staked claims for the leadership of the party. He denounced Thakin Than Tun and Thakin Thein Pe as ' Browderists', charging that the two had taken a compromising stand towards imperialism and opportunistic elements. The inner-party conflict had erupted after a speech by the AFPFL leader Ba Pe in January 1946. Ba Pe had denounced the political system in the Soviet ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thakin Than Tun
Thakin Than Tun (; 1911 – 24 September 1968) was a Burmese politician and leader of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) from 1945 until his assassination in 1968. He was the brother-in-law of Myanmar's independence leader Aung San and the uncle of the former State Counsellor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi. Early life Than Tun was born in 1911 in Kanyutkwin, British Burma. He married Khin Khin Gyi, the elder sister of Aung San Suu Kyi's mother Khin Kyi. Struggle for independence Than Tun worked as a school teacher after qualifying from the Teachers' Training School, Rangoon, and was influenced by Marxist writings. He joined in 1936 the nationalist '' Dobama Asiayone'' ("Our Burma" Association) and helped forge an alliance with Dr Ba Maw's Poor Man's Party to form the Freedom Bloc. He co-founded the ''Nagani'' (Red Dragon) Book Club with Thakin Nu in 1937, which for the first time widely circulated Burmese-language translations of the Marxist classics. He was imprisoned b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Communist Party Of Burma
The Communist Party of Burma (CPB), also known as the Burma Communist Party (BCP), is an underground communist party in Myanmar (formerly Burma). It is the oldest existing political party in the country. Founded in 1939, the CPB initially fought against British colonial forces before joining them in a temporary alliance to expel the invading Imperial Japanese Army from Myanmar during World War II. In the final years of the war, the CPB helped establish a leftist political and military coalition called the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL). However, the CPB fell out of favour with the more moderate socialists within the AFPFL due to differing views on how an independent Myanmar should be governed. The moderate faction of the AFPFL became the dominant political force in Myanmar's government following the country's independence in 1948. The CPB was subsequently expelled from the AFPFL and the government cracked down on the party's political activities, prompting the C ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ethnic Conflict
An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within society. This criterion differentiates ethnic conflict from other forms of struggle. Academic explanations of ethnic conflict generally fall into one of three schools of thought: primordialist, instrumentalist or constructivist. Recently, some have argued for either top-down or bottom-up explanations for ethnic conflict. Intellectual debate has also focused on whether ethnic conflict has become more prevalent since the end of the Cold War, and on devising ways of managing conflicts, through instruments such as consociationalism and federalisation. Theories of causes It is argued that rebel movements are more likely to organize around ethnicity because ethnic groups are more apt to be aggrieved, better able to mobilize, and more likely ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Communism
Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption." A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the State (polity), state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a Libertarian socialism, libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and an authoritarian socialism, authoritarian socialist, vanguardis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Myanmar
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has a population of about 55 million. It is bordered by India and Bangladesh to its northwest, China to its northeast, Laos and Thailand to its east and southeast, and the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal to its south and southwest. The country's capital city is Naypyidaw, and its largest city is Yangon (formerly Rangoon). Early civilisations in the area included the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu city-states in Upper Myanmar and the Mon kingdoms in Lower Myanmar. In the 9th century, the Bamar people entered the upper Irrawaddy River, Irrawaddy valley, and following the establishment of the Pagan Kingdom in the 1050s, the Burmese language and Culture of Myanmar, culture and Buddhism in Myanmar, Theravada Buddhism slowly became dominant in the co ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Burmese Kyat
The kyat ( or ; ; ISO 4217 code MMK) is the currency of Myanmar (Burma). The typical notation for the kyat is "K" (singular) and "Ks." (plural), placed before the numerals followed by "/-". Amounts less than K. 1/- are typically denoted with the number of pyas following "-/" (e.g. -/50 denotes half a kyat). The term ''kyat'' derives from the Myanmar units of measurement, Burmese unit ''kyattha'' (), equal to 16.3 (16.329324593) grams of silver. Current MMK exchange rates From 2001 to 2012, the official exchange rate varied between Ks. 5/75 and Ks. 6/70 per US dollar (Ks. 8/20 to Ks. 7/- per euro). However, the street rate (black market rate), which more accurately took into account the standing of the national economy, has varied from Ks. 750/- to Ks. 1,335/- per USD (Ks. 985/- to Ks. 1,475/- per EUR). The black market exchange rates (USD to MMK) decrease during the peak of the tourist season in Burma (December to January). During ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |