Burma and the little-known, root cause of many of its deep-seated problems
And what's with the two names - "Burma/Myanmar" thing? And what do Karen tribesmen do on their day off if they live in upstate New York?
Greetings, welcome back, and we hope you like the new name and a new slant. I promised more variety in topics, and this week we start with Burma, also known, for reasons explained here, as Myanmar.
Definitely a new topic for this publication, I first became interested in this nation in 2008, when I began volunteering and later working with refugees from that nation. Later I taught English as a Second Language to many refugees, inlcuding those from Burma. These days I have several friends from that nation, many former students or refugees I met while working at the refugee center, and from time to time, I hang out with them and eat their food. (Do I give them food in return? Of course, but I usually don’t have them in my place because their children tend to pull things off my shelves and throw them around and try to take them apart. Love the kids, but it’s an indigenous thing and it’s kind of frightful to see sometimes.)
FYI, just yesterday I was invited to attend a fundraiser at a Karen (Burmese-Thai border hill tribe) Baptist Church here in upstate New York and got to see a lot of people, eat food, and watch people play volleyball, as well as something that they called “K-ball” (if I remember correctly, I may not) but the internet calls “footvolley” that seems to be a combination of soccer and volleyball, believe it or not with people kicking and heading a rigid but soft plastic ball back and forth across a net trying to keep it from striking the ground. Nice day. Nice Event.
Again, feel free to share this. It contains good stuff that’s hard to find. And don’t forget to subscribe for free or if it is worth it to you, send me a few bucks a month to encourage me to write these things. If you can’t do that, just push like or send a comment.
People weren’t too interested in my links, but I shared a couple at the end anyway about stories I stumbled across this week.
Thanks for reading,
Peter Huston
Burma’s never ending problems - a two minute explanation that explains things more clearly than most people’s much longer explanations or “Why Burma is such a sh*t hole?”
A recent map of Burma, here called “Myanmar,” an issue that’s fully explained below. Notice that not only has “Rangoon,” the former capital, been renamed as “Yangon” but the names of all the other places have been changed as well. Because, well, as if this nation did not have enough problems, a vile group of people from an evil dictatorship called “the Tatmadaw” decided to rename everything. Well, this action made sense to them anyway. Full history of this strange happening is below. Please note the borders are basically unchanged.
Burma, also known as Myanmar for reasons explained later, is definitely one of the world’s trouble spots. And there’s no real reason why it needs to be. It has lots of resources and is located in the midst of one of the world’s definite economic growth zones with India, an economically important nation, to the West and Northwest, China, another so-called economic development miracle nation to the North and North East, and access to ports and an important ocean to the south. Thailand and Vietnam to the east are both economically and politically important nations, yet ever since it acquired independence from Britain in 1949 (through largely peaceful means) it has had a long and troubled history marked with near constant violence and a reputation as being a third world, hell hole.
If you read about the nation or do any other type of research, it gets real tragic real fast. A little know fact is that one of the world’s longest running civil wars is that between the army of the government of Burma (this army is known as the “tatmadaw”) and the Karen people who live on the eastern border of the nation bordering on Thailand and make their home in both nations with many going back and forth. And this is just one of several civil wars or internal conflicts in that nation.
The mountain and jungle regions of the remote reaches of Burma are known for lawlessness, and such things as drug warlords, ethnic guerillas, human trafficking for both sexual exploitation as well as for scam phone centers (seriously, why does this new horror always sound like a joke?), opium farming and heroin production (although this is largely being supplanted by shipping, smuggling, and manufacture of chemicals to produce methamphetamines, forced drafting of child soldiers, gang rape and torture by the Tatmadaw as a tool of terror and suppression, heavy use of landmines that kill and maim for years or decades after the end of a conflict, genocide, forcing people into the sea in leaky boats, among many, many other horrors.
What’s up with that anyway? How did things get so ugly? Why is there so much ethnic strife in Burma? And why has this been going on in a seemingly never ending way ever since the British left in 1949?
Well, today we offer the two minute version, the one that is basically done by pointing at a map or two and explaining what is there.
The first map is entitled "Centers of power in Southeast Asia at the end of the Eighteenth Century" and appears on page 98 of the 1987 edition of "In Search of Southeast Asia." It’s not the current edition of the book, I believe, but it is the edition that I was reading in 2009 while trying to learn a little it about and better understand Burma. I was doing this because in 2008, the year before, I had begun working and volunteering with refugees from Burma and was trying to understand them, their lives, the underlying issues that had forced them to flee their homelands and come here, and a sense of the history of what was going on.
As part of that research, I had found my old, unread copy of this book and began reading it. And when I came to that map, I just had this incredible “Ah-ha!” moment and the wonderful feeling, the “Eureka” moment, when one actual feels like pieces have suddenly come together.
Look at this map please. Notice the borders of modern Burma, borders that are the same as the map above. Notice how the interior and central portion, as well as a corridor from these central nations down to the sea, is dark.
It’s important to understand what this represents on the map.
Essentially what the map shows is the extent of cultural power and cultural influence in various centers in southeast Asia at the beginning of the modern era, long before the British gained control of the nation in the mid-19th Century.
At that time the kingdoms and cultures that are now dominant in Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam did not have boundaries in the sense of anything resembling the modern or Western sense of the term. And the role of the king was often different than in Europe of the time as well. Simplifying greatly for ease of transmitting a concept, the king had less of a political role and more of a ritual role in the lives of his citizens. His power was not seen as uniform through a given geographical territory. Instead, his power radiated outward from the center, becoming weaker the further one was from that center. Instead of there being a strict boundary to the state, instead the state just sort of faded away becoming less and less important until it faded away altogether at the edge of civilization. Then beyond this imaginary or strictly conceptual point in space, the point where civilization and the king’s influence (often one and the same) came to an end, there began the rugged lands of hills and forest and jungle, the lands where the uncivilized people who existed outside the pale of civilization lived. These were the people who in another time and place might have been called “barbarians” or tribal or indigenous peoples.
And that's what this map shows. The black "core area" is the center of the civilized area. Beyond it is a gray realm, where civilization exists but there's a certain lack of sophistication although the people are still part of the dominant culture. Light gray is a "fringe area" and the striped lines represent the areas where two different relatively equal states vie for control.
Look it over, familiarize yourself with the rough shapes of these things. I am going to offer it to you again, it’s that important. (I didn’t really plan to do this, My original plan was to simply present it once but when I attempted to move it, I saw it was here twice and decided I liked it that way.)
Now if one examines the map of Burma, what you essentially see is the way in which Burma is divided between a dominant, Burmese culture, and a surrounding area with many other minority cultures. And it is from these minority cultures, i.e. the Karen, the Chin, that many refugees come after attacks from the Burmese national army (AKA the Tatmadaw). And to some extent, the reason they come and attack is over a dispute over their relationship with the central government of the state now spelled as Myanmar.
In neighboring Thailand this map also shows the difference between the areas where hill tribes (some of which overlap with Burma) live.
As for Vietnam, the map shows the area where the so-called montagniards live.
A similar map could easily be made for China which also traditionally had areas where the civilized “Chinese” people lived and their culture dominated and areas where the non-ethnically Chinese minority peoples who did not traditionally follow the traditional cultural patterns of China.
But now let's get back to Burma. I present another map. This map is a map of the conflict zones of modern and post-independence Burma.
Check that out. There is basically a near complete overlap between the past areas of Burma where the ethnic minorities who were considered “uncivilized” by the Burmese kings of traditional Burma, and the current conflict zones.
Basically, the root of a huge amount of the terrible things that are happening in this place come from the fact that the military junta, the Tatmadaw, is trying to control and forcibly assimilate all these peoples. This involves forcing them to speak a language they traditionally never spoke (Burmese) and practice a religion they never practiced (a version of Theravada Buddhism, it’s not a bad religion, per se, but it’s not one I would want imposed upon me either).
And that, dear readers, is a very important thing that you are unlikely to learn elsewhere. Think about it, please. Tell your friends. Hopefully a way will be found to bring peace and democracy to this nation soon.
Portions of this as well as the key idea appeared on a blog piece I write in 2009: April 26, 2009
Please remember, its not just permissable but actually encouraged to share this piece. If you want people to understand what is happening in this place, PLEASE remember you can share this with them if you wish.
Now as for the second question, why two names for one country? (or, as in the map above, for every single town or city in the country? EVERYTHING has been renamed. Why?)
Why two names? Burma / Myanmar?
People commonly ask “Why two names?” or “Which is correct, ‘Burma’ or ‘Myanmar’?”
These are, of course, two different questions, and I will answer them one at a time.
In order to understand why, there are two different names for this nation, one needs to know a little bit about the Burmese language and the history of its English spelling, as well as its political history. First, in Burmese, the pronunciation of the “b” and “m” produces sounds that are much closer to each other than in English. As both sounds are what linguists refer to as “bilabial consonants,” meaning they are consonants made with both lips placed together, this is not too surprising. Experiment and you will find that by moving your lips a bit as you pronounce the “b” and “m” sounds it is possible to vary them and produce sounds in between. In Burmese, one such intermediary pronunnciation is the preferred pronuncation of the sound written as “b” or “B” using Roman letters.
So that explains the switch from “B” to “M.”
But what about the movement of the letter “R” from the middle of “Burma” to at the end of “Myanmar.” This stems from the fact that this nation, “Burma,” was a Brtish colony and most certainly not an American or Canadian colony. Therefore, when the British began spelling Burmese words, entering them into the English language lexicon, and encouraging the use of the Roman alphabet instead of the local Burmese script to write them, they encouraged transcription of the sounds using BRITISH ideas on what the letters should sound like instead of American or Canadian ideas on how these letters sound. And, obviously, one difference in the pronunciation of British words vs American words is the pronunciation of the letter “R.” — as in “moth-uh” or “fa-thuh” vs “mother” or “father.” Which means that if one uses American pronunciation “Burma” and “Myanmar” are quite different sounding, if one uses British pronuniction, then it’s much closer something like “Buhmah” vs “Myanmah,” not that big a difference especially if one pronounces the “y” as a consonant and not a vowel.
So that explains the sounds. But who was it who went to all this trouble to make the change and why did they do it, and which spelling is correct or preferred anyway?
To understand that, one needs to understand the behavior of the military junta that ran the nation a couple governments back. No, not the current military junta, or the short lived democractic government that ran the nation before that, but the military junta before that one, the one that imprisoned Aung San Su Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prized Winner and former President during its short period of being democratic. The one that ran the nation for about 50 years until 2015 and then seized control of the troubled nation again in 2021 when they attempted to seize control of the nation again, plunging it back into civil war. The one dominated by the Tatmadaw, the Burmese army.
While a brutal dictatorship whose rule was marked by economic and human rights disasters, it did have a strong ideological interest in not just preserving Burmese culture as they interpreted it, but also to impose this same version of Burmese culture and associated so-called Burmese behaviors on the people who lived within the borders of the nation, many of them minorities who did not consider themselves Burmese at all, and had no historical connection with the culture and the way the Tatamadaw (Burmese army) thought they should act.
As part of this ideology, while faced with few resources or support to allow it to produce large scale cultural change, instead this government demonstrated its commitment to “decolonization” by changing the spelling of place names from the spelling the British had used to something that they had decided was “more Burmese.” Therefore “Burma” became respelled as “Myanmar.” The capital, “Rangoon,” was now spelled as “Yangon.” (although the government did decide to move the capital to a different city, another poorly done and strange action with roots in traditional Burmese culture.)
And that, dear readers, is why the country has two names.
As for which one is preferred, it’s a bit like this. When the government announced the new name was “Myanmar,” some people outside the government changed to attempt to be sensitive or accomodate what they perceived to be the preferences of a foreign government. Others did not hear of this change, and made no attempt to follow the change. After all, sadly, how many English speaking people around the world speak much about Burma anyway?
HOWEVER, there was a third group of people, those who noticed and heard about the attempted name change for the nation, but were quite aware of who made the name change and did not approve of this dicatorship that had seized control of the nation and that was suppressing democratic reform efforts there. These people refused to follow the attempted name change because they did not support the people who had made it and did not wish to support the things they did.
Therefore, generally speaking, among people informed about what is going on in Burma today, the preferred name for Burma is Burma and not “Myanmar.” —but if you use “Myanmar” instead but express a genuine interest or knowledge of the place, my experience is that most of the people from that nation, will be quite pleased that you have an interest in their nation and its future and wish to understand its current problems, and will not make a big deal out of referring to the nation by its “newish” name.
However, one good thing to remember is that many prefer to be known as “refugees from Burma” instead of “Burmese refugees” because while they lived in Burma, they were never cultural Burmese but instead a minority group with a history and culture of their own who have suffered terribly due to attempts by a dictatorship that was trying to force them to act Burmese without their consent or desire to do so.
A few links about random Asian related topics that I stumbled across this week.
No, this is not an attempt at a systematic news round up. Simply sharing things I randomly stumbled across this week and went, “Hmmmmmm, now that’s interesting. Let’s share it with my readers. Can’t hurt.”
The Use of Crossbows in the People’s Liberation Army of China.
This topic is a hundred percent new to me, but I enjoy this YouTube channel for news and views on current military topics and consider it pretty good, so I am sharing it here.
Task & Purpose -- Why China's Special Forces Still Use Crossbows
Who is Mayor Alice Guo?
As long time readers may recall, I stumbled across this weird-ass story from the Philipines. First, in the Philipines there are networks of phone centers designated for use in providing gambling opportunities to people “offshore” or outside of the Philipines and they are approved and their operations monitored, although with varying degrees of success, by the Filipino government. They are often called “POGOs” for “Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations” ( see Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator - Wikipedia Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations )
Not too long ago the authorities in the Philipines raided one of these places and discovered literally hundreds of people, both Filipinos and non-Filipinos, being forced against their will (hmm, redundant phrase that anyone?) to make scam calls. Which is pretty weird and disturbing in itself, but it gets weirder as there was a great deal of circumstantial evidence that the local mayor of a place called Bamban was involved in this criminal operation in her town. People looked into her background and discovered that she basically did not have much of a background and no one was quite sure where she went to school or who her parents were. I mean no one but no one seemed to be completely sure of who she was or where she came from.
And while it looks like charges against her may be pressed soon, it is fascinating to watch the rumors swirl.
Hmmmmm? Would you buy a used car from the woman? It’s the mysterious Mayor Alice Guo (or is it?)
https://verafiles.org/articles/fact-check-mayor-alice-guo-not-dead
https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/fact-check/no-hontiveros-claim-rodrigo-duterte-uncle-alice-guo/
Charges seem to be pending against her:
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/910159/alice-guo-criminal-charges/story/
And here’s part of the ugly but dramatic back story:
https://www.theasianaffairs.com/alice-guo-incident-intensifies-pogo-raids/
For the record, among the countless reasons that people despise Trump, I am not terribly upset with him for calling some nations “shit holes.” What I am upset with is the implication that people who come from terrible places are human beings of less value than those of us who through random chance or good luck or perhaps the will of God were born in much nicer places. I just don’t see that as something worthy of any correlation.
Meanwhile feel free to buy my book on Trump if you want more of my thoughts on him: Scams from the Great Beyond: The Presidential Edition