Daw Su

Aung San



Suu Kyi


Suu Kyi was born on June 19th, 1945. Her father was murdered one month after her second birthday and she therefore has no personal memory of him but there is such a cultural memory of him that she must have felt his presence in her life for as long as she can remember. She had two older brothers just one and two years older than her.Aung San and family



Suu Kyi in front


Suu Kyi grew up and journeyed to Oxford, England for her college education. She attended St. Hugh's College, an all women college of Oxford University, in the mid-1960's. She majored in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. After pursuing that major for a period of time she decided that she wanted to change her major to Literature but she was not permitted by the university authorities to do so.


















Suu Kyi in 1965 She was a beautiful and exotic flower at St. Hugh's. She typically wore the Burmese longyi, a variety of sarong, and often put flowers in her hair. She was exquisitely beautiful and graceful. She also charmed the other students with her innocence and integrity. After graduation Suu Kyi went to work at the United Nations in New York. After three years she went to Bhutan to join Michael Aris, a college friend, who was to become her husband. They had been corresponding frequently while she was in New York and he was in Bhutan. They married on New Years Day of 1972. Later they went back to London and then to Oxford in the mid-1970's where Michael began work on his doctorate. First Alexander was born, then her second son, Kim. Suu Kyi coped with usual stresses of a young couple; finances, housing and child care. She began to pursue her personal interests in literature. She had told Michael at the beginning of their marriage that there might come a time when she would be called upon to serve her people.























At the end of March 1988 Suu Kyi received a phone message in Oxford that her mother had suffered a severe stroke. Suu Kyi immediately flew to her side to care for her, first in the hospital and later at home when it was clear that no purpose was being served by keeping her at the hospital.






During the nine months that Suu Kyi was caring for her mother Myanmar was undergoing severe political turmoil. The regime of Ne Win was suppressing political discent with lethal force. General Ne Win announced that he was going to resign and this opened the possibility that the country could return to civilian political control. Ne Win did resign on July 23rd, 1988. In August Suu Kyi gave her first speech of about one thousand that she made in the election campaign. The military leaders who took over after Ne Win's resignation were counting on Burmese politics devolving into a squabbling among many political parties, as had happened in the past. They thought the anti-military government vote would be so divided that the military sponsored party would emerge as the party that would form the government in the parliament. When the military feared that would not happen a coterie of army officers loyal to Ne Win staged a coup in late September which created a government of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). (The acronym SLORC sounded like some name for an evil creature from a story by J.R.R. Tolkien`.)






Suu Kyi continued to campaign for political change. In July 1989 on the anniversary of the assassination of her father she accused Ne Win of still contolling the army and SLORC. The next day she was put under house arrest and forbidden to engage in political activity and have contact with foreign media or embassies. Soon the junta government restricted visits to her by her husband and sons. This was not soft treatment. The military junta struck at the depth of her emotional existence and their torment of her has continued for over seventeen years.


































(To be continued.)


Burman Prehistory



The record of the prehistoric movements of tribal groups in Southeastern Asia is left in the linguistic affiliations of the languages spoken throughout the area. Burmese is a member of the Tibeto-Burman family of languages. This indicates that the Burmans originated in the north in the Himalayas. The branches of the Tibeto-Burman language family are shown below along with the areas in which they are now spoken.










The Tibeto-Burman Family of Languages


Language Group Area Spoken


Tibetan Tibet, western China


Burman Irrawaddy River Valley and adjacent areas


Lolo


Kachin Kachin State, Shan State, Assam in India, Yunan in China


Kukish border area of Myanmar and South Assam and Bangladesh


Naga Nagaland in India, Sikkim in India, east Nepal, west Bhutan










From this one sees that the more natural alignment of the states of eastern India would have been in a federation involving the Burmans. As a result of the vagaries of empire-building they ended up as part of the empire created for the Hindi's of North India by the British, along with the Tamils and other Dravidian language-speaking peoples of South India.










--------------------------------------------------------------------------------






The Political Divisions of Myanmar (Burma)










Population Density by Administrative Divison


The History of Myanmar (Burma)


The southern part of what is now Myanmar was first settled by the Mons people who came into the area from the southwest coastal area. The Mons along with the related Khmer entered the southeast Asia region from the Mekong River valley area. The Burmans first settled in the north central Irrawaddy River valley area. They were preceded in that area by the Pyu's who were culturally related to the Burman tribes.






Yangon (Rangoon)


The city of Yangon (Rangoon) developed at the site of the Shwe Dagon pagoda. This pagoda had been a purely religious site long before the town of Dagon was declared there by the Mon king in the early 1400s. The Burman king Alaungpaya conquered the Mons kingdom on the Lower Irrawaddy in 1755 and renamed the town at the site Yangon, which means end of war strife in Burmese. Rangoon is just an inaccurate transliteration of Yangon.






King Alaungpaya wanted to develop Yangon as a port to replace the port of Syriam. There may have been concern about the security of Syriam which had been captured by Portuguese mercenaries in the early 1600s.






The demographic character of Yangon changed dramatically over the years. In the late 19th century it was more cosmopolitan than Burmese in character.










The Changing Ethnic


Composition of the Population


of Yangon (Rangoon)


Period Ethnic Composition


c. 1750 •Mons 100%






c. 1900 •Burmese 33%


•Indian 48%






c. 1930 •Burmese 35%


•Indian 53%






c. 1950 •Burmese 60%


•Indian 21%


•Chinese 8%


•Anglo-Burmese 5%






c. 1980 •Burmese 90%


•










It is notable that by the 1980s the ethnic proportion of Chinese in the Yangon population was greater than that of Indians.






The Political Life of U Nu


In 1961 U Nu, then Prime Minister of the Union of Burma, conferred upon Zhou Enlai of the People's Republic of China a title specifically chosen by U Nu. U Nu wanted to honor Zhou Enlai for his role in the settlement of issues concerning the border between China and Burma. The title was:






Supreme Upholder of


the Glory of Great Love


Although this title was conferred upon another it best characterizes what U Nu saw as his role in Burma and world politics.






For someone who in later life was noted for his devout religiousness, even saintliness, U Nu did not get off to an auspicious start. During his teenage years he was an alcoholic who consorted with older alcoholics and was known by the nickname, Saturday-born Street-Arab. He was born on a Saturday and was the first child of his parents. Such children were considered in Burman culture to be quarrelsome and a trial for their parents. His parents took steps to try to thwart his astrological destiny, one of which was to give him the name Nu which in Burmese means gentle or tender.






When Maung Nu started drinking alcoholic beverages at age nine his parents must have thought he was fulfilling his destiny as a Saturday-born first child. Maung Nu resisted all attempts to reform him but at age eighteen he began experiencing profoundly moving perceptions of beauty in life and on his own he stopped drinking and became a devout Buddhist.






(To be continued)










--------------------------------------------------------------------------------






Economic Development During the Era of U Nu






The Attempt to Create a Welfare State


The constitution of Burma provided for the creation of socialism. Among other things the State was declared the owner of all land. The State was given the power to nationalize any branch of the economy as long as it was done through legal procedure and with compensation to the owners. Even before independence a Ministry of National Planning was set up and a Two-Year Economic Development Plan formulated. U Nu announced at that time (1948) that he would:






nationalize monopolizing capitalist undertakings and... administer the resulting national undertakings by partnership between the state and the workers.


The Burmese government nationalized the major inland water transportation company, Irrawaddy Flotilla on June 1st, 1948. The Burmese government continued the British initiated control of the purchase and marketing of rice in Burma. In October of 1948 the Burmese legislature passed the Land Nationalization Act and U Nu asserted that collective farming was the ultimate objective of this legislation. Already, before independence, land rents were limited through the Rent Standardization Act of 1947.






The Land Nationalization Act of 1948 allowed the State to take possession of all land that was not being tilled by the owner. This was a popular step because approximately two-thirds of the rice land was owned by non-resident landlords many of whom were Indian money lenders who acquired the land through foreclosure for debts owed by Burmese farmers. The Land Nationalization Act limited the size of land holdings to 50 acres.






In addition to the Land Nationalization Act of 1948 the following legislation concerning agriculture was passed during 1948:










•The Agricultural Bank Act


•The Agricultural Laborers' Minimum Wage Act


•The Tenancy Disposal Act


•The Agriculturalists Debt Relief Act


In 1952 U Nu promised that someday every family would own a house and an automobile and have an income $175 to $200 per month. In August of 1952 he also convened the Pyidawtha (Happy Land) Conference at which further elements of the proposed welfare state were announced. Also announced were an eight-year plan for industrial development and a five-year plan for agricultural development. The plans really were not well thought out and the government did not have the funds to implement them. Almost forty percent of the funding came from creating money. This of course led to further problems with inflation.






The Eight-Year Plan was a failure both in the sense of having failed to achieve its targets and also in that it diverted resources away from achievable goals. By the mid-1950s Burma's rice exports were still one third less than those of 1938-39. Timber exports were less than one fourth of those of the average of the period 1937 to 1941. Mineral exports were less than four percent of the average of those of that same 1937 1941 period. Eventually the Eight-Year Plan was abandoned and a Four-Year Plan formulated.






(To be continued)






The failed attempts at socialism in Burma are rather typical of the experience of underdeveloped countries in the post-World War II era. What was presented as planned economic development was little more than formulation of goals, in effect wish-lists. Often the targets specified in the plans were unattainable, but even in the case of attainable targets there was the problem that implementation of programs was sorely lacking. The leadership wanted to formulate schemes but left the implementation of those schemes in limbo.






One element of the failure is that the leadership wanted to simultaneously recover from the war, consolidate central administrative control, develop economically and, on top of these very difficult tasks, create a welfare state. As U Nu expressed it in 1952 the objective of the Burmese government was:






to exploit the immense natural wealth of the country to benefit the citizens totally and create conditions of contentment and happiness.


On top of the usual problems of an underdeveloped country Burma had the special problems associated with the fact that World War II rolled over it twice. The British destroyed the major oil wells to keep their production out of the hands of the Japanese. The major mines for tungsten, tin, lead and silver had likewise been destroyed. In capturing the country both the Japanese and the British bombed the cities and their facilities extensively.






National Account Statistics for Myanmar






Gross Domestic Product GDP


of Myanmar in 2000/01 Prices


Year GDP


(billions of kyats)


1995 1819.7


1996 1936.9


1997 2048.2


1998 2166.4


1999 2402.9


2000 2552.7


2001 2842.3


2002 3184.1


2003 3624.8






Source: IMF Financial Statistics






Consumer Price Index


Year 2000=100


Year Price


Index Rate of


Inflation


%/yr


2000 100.0


2001 121.1 21.1


2002 190.2 57.1


2003 259.8 36.6


2004 271.6 4.5


2005 297.0 9.4


2006 356.4 20.0






Source: IMF Financial Statistics






Money Supply, GDP and the Income Velocity of Money


in Myanmar 2001-2006


Year Money & Quasi-Money


(billions kyats) GDP


Current


Prices


(billion kyats/yr) Income


Velocity


(per year)


2001 1151.7 3548.5 3.08


2002 1550.8 5625.3 3.63


2003 1572.4 7716.6 4.91


2004 2081.8 9078.9 4.36


2005 2651.1 Not Available






Source: IMF Financial Statistics


(To be continued)d














--------------------------------------------------------------------------------






For the economic histories of other countries click here.














--------------------------------------------------------------------------------






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------






















HOME PAGE OF applet-magic


HOME PAGE OF Thayer Watkins
                                                                                      More info