ISAS Insights

A question that the international community is currently grappling with is how to handle the situation and the powers that be in Myanmar. The regime, headed by the 75-year-old General Than Shwe, continues to control the destiny of the nation and rules it with an iron fist, unresponsive to calls for change, both from within and outside the country. Indeed, the country has been run by the military junta for more than four decades, dating back to when General Ne Win staged a coup in 1962 (Myanmar, then known as Burma, had obtained independence from the British in 1948), suspended the Constitution, banned the opposition and introduced “the Burmese way to socialism”. Power was exercised by the State Law and Order Council (SLORC) which put down massive public demonstrations in 1987 and 1988. And in the following year in 1989, the SLORC changed the name of the country to Myanmar, declaring that it was more in consonance with Burmese history and culture. The United States and many Western countries refused to recognise this change of nomenclature and continued to call it Burma, though at the United Nations took it on the new name.