To have only just heard of Myanmar?

[staceybeaker]

Watching the news about the coup there and I thought it must be quite a small country but now I've looked it up it's really not. Obviously I am embarrassed about my own lack of geography knowledge. Has everyone else heard of it or known much about this country before?

OP regardless of whether you knew this country or not I’m glad you started this thread because there are some really interesting stories here abs I have definitely learnt something!

@mammmamia

OP regardless of whether you knew this country or not I’m glad you started this thread because there are some really interesting stories here abs I have definitely learnt something!

I agree with that, it's been educational. I wanted to ask someone who knows what the language would be called? Would the main language still be referred to as Burmese?

@cateycloggs in answer to your question this is where "Myanmar" becomes more commonly used in place of "Burma" by local people.

It does become a bit of a mouthful at times but my colleagues would refer to:

"(The) Myanmar Language"
"Myanmar Peoples" (sic)

Rather than the term "Burmese" - Myanmar being a more useful catch all term in this context than Burma (i.e. Bamar - the dominant ethnic group)

I know that it's not logical and contradicts a lot of what has been said previously about the naming of the place itself but that's part of the charm of it all.

Have I mentioned that it's a wonderful place despite all of its troubles?

Know of Burma or Myanmar to be a country that treats muslims horrifically. Ie they beat and rape them repeatedly. YouTube Myanmars treatment of Muslims. It's actually quite awful. A country I would never ever visit.
I've seen videos of them setting muslims on fire, beating little kids and even kicking an elderly gentleman who was just sitting on his steps outside his home.

This is what I know of Burma sadly.

OP regardless of whether you knew this country or not I’m glad you started this thread because there are some really interesting stories here abs I have definitely learnt something!

Thank you so much and I have learned a lot from it too. The collective knowledge on MN is amazing and thanks to all who have contributed

It does seem as if the world turns a blind eye to the persecution of Muslims, Rohingya and Uyghurs in China being prime examples.

@Cadent the worlds governments might but I don’t think people in general are. I read a few news reports on the situation in China and what they’re doing, I’ve not been able to get it out of my head since. I don’t understand why there’s not severe sanctions, retribution and more worldwide outrage over it all. I’d rather the government intervened with the concentration camps in China over the situation in Hong Kong. If there’s anything that should be in the worlds eyes it’s the camps.

@Mingalabar

I LOVE your user name. It was one of only 2 Burmese words(sorry, folks, but it was called that in 1984 when I was there) that I managed to learn during my two flying (7-day visa only allowed to visitors) trips there in 1984. I remember being on the back of a truck taking backpackers from various cheap hotels to catch a dawn flight out of Rangoon to India and we were stopped by the military (still dark outside) and an armed soldier came and pointed a torch in at us all to check our faces and make sure none of us were Burmese. It was pretty tense. When he got to me, I said Mingalabaa (Good morning) and he froze and then cracked a huge smile and nodded at us all and let us go on. It had (luckily) gone from a tense unfriendly atmosphere to an atmosphere of mutual goodwill. The other "word" I had learned (thanks Lonely Planet) was Chay zoo tin baa day, which means thank you. I found Burma a really magical place and very beautiful and all the Burmese people I met and talked to were friendly and kind with a good sense of humour - amazing when you found out what difficult lives they had. (Also, when they get the giggles, they CRY and roll about on the floor...). Very happy memories, but not of the strict regime.

I don't think anyone should be ashamed of not knowing all about every country and their politics. I have travelled a very great deal (I prioritised backpacking over career between 18 and 35) but I can remember that, when I was planning a long trip in slow stages to Australia, I was surprised to find out that Singapore was in fact an island (and I have Geography O-level, oh dear).

The official language is Burmese @cateycloggs but it is only the first language of approx 2/3 of the country, the Bamar. There actually 2 forms of the language, literary and colloquial/spoken. The literary form is used for literature, news, speeches, is taught in schools etc. It is both written and spoken. The colloquial language is the language that people speak to each other (and there are multiple dialects). Literary and colloquial Burmese are significantly different, not like the small differences we have between written English and local dialects. Maybe the difference between Shakespearean English and spoken English, is a good analogy. Just to complicate things further, you can use a combination of both, a more formal/educated way of speaking.

Myanmar is the (anglicised) literary form of the name for the country, Burma is the (anglicised) colloquial/spoken name of the country. They both refer to the Bamar people though so Myanmar isn't really more inclusive, despite the military regime's claim that was why they changed the name. If anything, it is more elitist.

About 1/3 of the country speak one of the many other indigenous languages as their first language.

My friend in Yangon has just posted a vid on FB, everyone banging pots and pans for 30 minutes, she is out on her balcony as is everyone else, to protest against the military coup.

Even doing this can be dangerous given what happened last time. 10,000 were killed, imprisoned and tortured or were missing.

Thanks, orangenasturtium, that's very interesting and shows the name is not such a simple topic as it appeared. It's good to realise that other country's politics are complex and not jump to conclusions.

When I went to Myanmar just as it was 'open' to travellers, it was positively medieval - hand carts and oxen carts. Looking at it on TV now - there appear to be shops, cars and western dress in places. What a change in a short time.
The other thing that struck me was Buddhism was pretty money grabbing and dominant of a chronically poor people. There was also a lot of Buddhist monks behind the Rhohingya atrocities.

I should more properly have said they were 'supportive' of the atrocities rather than 'behind them'.

It might've been mentioned already, but Myanmar is also home to the most recent genocides of the world which has been ongoing since 2017.

I've always known it as Burma (as my grandad was based there as a soldier during ww2), until a few years since it started dominating the news and I learnt it's now Myanmar.

A good doctor friend, who has volunteered for MSF Doctors Without Borders numerous times, went to Bangladesh to help treat Myanmar refugees. Some of the personal accounts he shared of human rights violations made my blood run cold. Rape, execution, mass murder, entire villages being burnt down. So many children with PTSD. It's horrific that this genocide has been allowed to be carried out in this day and age.

@Ding123

I've always known it as Burma (as my grandad was based there as a soldier during ww2), until a few years since it started dominating the news and I learnt it's now Myanmar.

A good doctor friend, who has volunteered for MSF Doctors Without Borders numerous times, went to Bangladesh to help treat Myanmar refugees. Some of the personal accounts he shared of human rights violations made my blood run cold. Rape, execution, mass murder, entire villages being burnt down. So many children with PTSD. It's horrific that this genocide has been allowed to be carried out in this day and age.

Yes - and the genocide was and has been allowed to continue under the guise of a democracy (albeit a recent fairly recent one). It's such a complicated situation but I really hope the atrocities end soon and people can live in all areas of Myanmar without living in fear for their lives.

@Ding123 it's terrible and was ongoing while I lived there. The problem is you really have had two governments running side by side, the Tatmadaw (military) and the democratically elected NLD (ASSK et al) who to some degree have had to tread on eggshells throughout.

Don't forget any attempt to confront the Tatmadaw and enact further reforms is an extremely dangerous business - this poor man, of immense intellect and integrity was working on revision of the constitution when he was assassinated - make no mistake, it was a warning to others to toe the line and the military were behind it:

www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-murder-politics/

I was there at the time, had passed through the airport and had previously met him in an unrelated professional capacity - it sent a chill through the entire country and had precisely the effect they wanted. Don't forget that the army ran amok on their own people in 1988. I am still in contact with people with bullet wounds from that day, that lost friends and family either shot or clubbed to death.

The Tatmadaw have slaughtered and ethnically cleansed the lovely Karen people from many areas. So incredibly brave and loyal to the British in WWII and then betrayed by us by not granting them a homeland. Thousands upon thousands of them have spent two or three generations in refugee camps across the Thai border, just like the Rakhine.

There are various aspects of the Rakhine situation and ASSK that left people feeling extremely let down, but what would have been the consequences had the NLD condemned it in defiance of the Army?

There is some indication that they weren't that bothered (see earlier posts) but the fact remains that the entire population had to be very cautious about returning to military rule as they would use any excuse to cling to the cronyism and power... which is how we ended up with the situation today.

The fact is, the Rohingya situation is terrible but is not the will of the average Myanmar Burmese citizen and is not Muslim Specific as such. The Tatmadaw are evil and will try to crush anyone showing signs of dissent.

Mingalabar I had a Muslim taxi driver in Yangon - IIRC his grandparents were originally from India - who told me that the Rohingya were not being persecuted because they were Muslim. It was a really interesting conversation - this was 2018.

Thanks @borageforager that is a great illustration. I'm desperate to keep this in peoples consciousness.

For anyone here is a piece in "Vice" written by a journalist who knows the country inside out:

www.vice.com/en/article/epd8ak/the-hated-general-who-masterminded-the-myanmar-coup

And a Twitter link to show you the dignified sort of protesting that the real people are getting involved with:

twitter.com/yehtoo_nobel/status/1357398122532511745?s=20

I worry for my friend in Yangon. She had only just joined Twitter and now her account has been 'temporarily restricted'.
I know the military are trying to ban FB. I wonder about Twitter too...

@borageforager

Mingalabar I had a Muslim taxi driver in Yangon - IIRC his grandparents were originally from India - who told me that the Rohingya were not being persecuted because they were Muslim. It was a really interesting conversation - this was 2018.

Right, so the burning of Mosques and confiscation of land from Muslims to give to Buddhists has nothing to do with religion? OK

As I said upthread, many people want to turn a blind eye to ethnic cleaning of Muslims.

@Cadent no ones saying that. Just that in the case of the Rohingya, from having "been on the ground" Islam was not the prime factor, although certainly significant from some angles.

There was a backlash fomented against Muslim populations at the time by deliberate agitators from the right wing Buddhist community but this was widely condemned and resulted in a few tragic events.

Separate to this there have been events where Muslims were chased out, brutally attacked and their businesses burnt (look up the events in Meiktila) there is no denying it. Any decent person should be rightly appalled as the should with the Uighur.

cadent I didn’t say ‘therefore on the evidence of this one taxi driver we can conclude this has nothing to do with religion’, did I? I was extremely surprised by the conversation I had with this chap, Mingalabar’s post about the complexities of the political situation etc reminded me of it.