Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
could save the country from disintegration. On March 2, 1962 Ne Win, along with sixteen
other senior army officers, staged a
coup
, arresting U Nu and others and proclaiming the es-
tablishment of a socialist state to be run by a military-led revolutionary council, initiating a
periodofarmyrulewhichpersists(albeitinneuteredform)tothisday.Myanmar'sageofthe
generals had begun.
Ne Win and military rule
Thecoupitself wasalmost completely bloodless, while protests following theannouncement
of military rule were allowed to run their course until July 1962, when soldiers fired into a
student protest at Rangoon University, killing over a hundred people. In March 1964 all op-
position political parties were banned, and hundreds of activists arrested. Meanwhile, there
were ongoing insurgencies by the
Kachin Independence Organization
(from 1961), and in
1964 a rebellion by the Shan State Army.
In response, Ne Win commenced slamming all Myanmar's doors on the rest of the world
firmlyshut.Around15,000privatefirmswerenationalized,causingtheeconomytostagnate;
foreign aid agencies and the World Bank were expelled; the study of English was cut back in
schools; and visitors limited to 24-hour visas. The few Burmese who were allowed to travel
weresentmainlytotheSovietUnionfortraining;masspresscensorshipwasputinplaceand
foreign-language publications and privately owned newspapers banned. Over 200,000 expat
Chinese, Indians and Westerners quit the country, along with almost the whole of the coun-
try's remaining
Jewish
population.
More than a decade of isolation and underachievement passed. Ne Win retired from the
army in 1974 but continued to run the country through the
Burma Socialist Programme
Party
(BSPP), the nation's one and only officially recognized political organization. Further
strikes and demonstrations took place in 1974, during which a further hundred-odd students
and workers were shot, while in 1978 the army drove a quarter of a million
Rohingya
Muslims
into Bangladesh.
Ne Win's disastrous
currency reforms
in 1987 caused further suffering and provoked a fur-
therroundofprotestsandriots,whilenewgovernmentpolicyforcingfarmerstosellproduce
below market values (following on from the UN's decision in late 1987 to downgrade My-
anmar to “Least Developed Country” status) led to further violent rural protests. Public let-
ters written by Ne Win's former second in command General Brigadier Aung Gyi described
Burma as “almost a joke” compared to other Southeast Asian countries. Not surprisingly, he
was arrested soon afterwards.
