Portal:Myanmar
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Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and also known as Burma (the official name until 1989), is a country in Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has a population of about 55 million. It is bordered by Bangladesh and India to its northwest, China to its northeast, Laos and Thailand to its east and southeast, and the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal to its south and southwest. The country's capital city is Naypyidaw, and its largest city is Yangon (formerly Rangoon).
Myanmar is a member of the East Asia Summit, Non-Aligned Movement, ASEAN, and BIMSTEC, but it is not a member of the Commonwealth of Nations despite once being part of the British Empire. Myanmar is a Dialogue Partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The country is very rich in natural resources, such as jade, gems, oil, natural gas, teak and other minerals, as well as also endowed with renewable energy, having the highest solar power potential compared to other countries of the Great Mekong Subregion. However, Myanmar has long suffered from instability, factional violence, corruption, poor infrastructure, as well as a long history of colonial exploitation with little regard to human development. In 2013, its GDP (nominal) stood at US$56.7 billion and its GDP (PPP) at US$221.5 billion. The income gap in Myanmar is among the widest in the world, as a large proportion of the economy is controlled by cronies of the military junta. Myanmar is one of the least developed countries; as of 2020, according to the Human Development Index, it ranks 147 out of 189 countries in terms of human development, the lowest in Southeast Asia. Since 2021, more than 600,000 people were displaced across Myanmar due to the surge in violence post-coup, with more than 3 million people in dire need of humanitarian assistance. (Full article...)
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The Provisional Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (Burmese: ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် အိမ်စောင့်အစိုးရ), is the executive body of Myanmar under the current military junta, the State Administration Council. On 1 August 2021, it replaced the Management Committee of the State Administration Council, which had been in place since 19 February 2021, following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état. Some ministers were appointed by Min Aung Hlaing immediately following the coup on 1 February, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services exercising emergency powers.
Due to the state of emergency, the cabinet is led by Prime Minister Min Aung Hlaing rather than Acting President Myint Swe, despite the president being the constitutional head of government. (Full article...) -
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The Royal Armed Forces (Burmese: တပ်မတော်, [taʔmədɔ̀]) were the armed forces of the Burmese monarchy from the 9th to 19th centuries. It refers to the military forces of the Pagan Kingdom, the Kingdom of Ava, the Hanthawaddy Kingdom, the Toungoo dynasty and the Konbaung dynasty in chronological order. The army was one of the major armed forces of Southeast Asia until it was defeated by the British over a six-decade span in the 19th century.
The army was organised into a small standing army of a few thousand, which defended the capital and the palace, and a much larger conscript-based wartime army. Conscription was based on the ahmudan system, which required local chiefs to supply their predetermined quota of men from their jurisdiction on the basis of population in times of war. The wartime army also consisted of elephantry, cavalry, artillery and naval units. (Full article...) -
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In the Burmese language, the term mont (Burmese: မုန့်; pronounced [mo̰ʊɴ]) translates to "snack", and refers to a wide variety of prepared foods, ranging from sweet desserts to savory food items that may be cooked by steaming, baking, frying, deep-frying, or boiling. Foods made from wheat or rice flour are generally called mont, but the term may also refer to certain varieties of noodle dishes, such as mohinga. Burmese mont are typically eaten with tea during breakfast or afternoon tea time.
Each variety of mont is designated by a descriptive word or phrase that precedes or follows the word mont, such as htoe mont (lit. 'snack that is prodded') or mont lone yay baw (lit. 'floating snack balls'). The term mont has been borrowed into several regional languages, including into Shan as မုၼ်း and into Jingpho as muk. (Full article...) -
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The 1912 Maymyo earthquake or Burma earthquake struck Burma on the morning of May 23, with an epicentre near Taunggyi and Pyin Oo Lwin in Shan State. The earthquake was initially calculated at 8.0 on the surface wave magnitude scale (Ms ) by Beno Gutenberg and Charles Francis Richter, and described by them as being one of the most remarkable seismic events in the early 1900s. Recent re-evaluation of the earthquake, however, have revised the magnitude to 7.6–7.9. It was preceded by two foreshocks on May 18 and 21 with respective intensities V and VII on the Rossi–Forel scale, while the mainshock was assigned IX. Shaking was felt throughout most of Burma, parts of Siam and Yunnan; an area covering approximately 375,000 square miles. It was one of the largest earthquakes in the country. (Full article...) -
Image 5On 2 July 2020, a major landslide at the Wai Khar jade mining site in the Hpakant area of Kachin State, Myanmar, killed between 175 and 200 miners in the country's deadliest-ever mining accident. At 06:30 local time (MMT) heavy rains triggered the collapse of a heap of mining waste, which came tumbling down into a lake. This generated a 6.1-meter (20 ft) wave of mud and water that buried those working at the Wai Khar mine. The miners killed or injured by the landslide were independent "jade pickers", who scavenge tailings from larger operators and who live in ramshackle quarters at the base of large mounds of rubble.
Myanmar's jade industry supplies 70% to 90% of the world jade supply. The industry had become known for its fatal accidents in the preceding years, with the previous deadliest accident in 2015 killing 116 people. While the government responded with promises to make reforms in the jade mining industry, activists claim that little has been done in practice since then. (Full article...) -
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The Salween is a Southeast Asian river, about 3,289 kilometres (2,044 mi) long, flowing from the Tibetan Plateau south into the Andaman Sea. The Salween flows primarily within southwest China and eastern Myanmar (Burma), with a short section forming the border of Burma and Thailand. Throughout most of its course, it runs swiftly through rugged mountain canyons. Despite the river's great length, only the last 90 km (56 mi) are navigable, where it forms a modest estuary and delta at Mawlamyine. The river is known by various names along its course, including the Thanlwin (named after Elaeocarpus sp., an olive-like plant that grows on its banks) in Burma and the Nu Jiang (or Nu River, named after Nu people) in China. The commonly used spelling "Salween" is an anglicisation of the Burmese name dating from 19th-century British maps.
Due to its great range of elevation and latitude coupled with geographic isolation, the Salween basin is considered one of the most ecologically diverse regions in the world, containing an estimated 25 percent of the world's terrestrial animal species and thousands of plant species. Along its course the Salween provides water for agriculture and supports abundant fisheries, especially in the delta region. The Salween basin is home to numerous ethnic minority groups, whose ancestors largely originated in the Tibetan Plateau and northwest China. Starting about 5,000 years ago, people began migrating south along the river, establishing small kingdoms and city-states. (Full article...) -
Image 7Violent clashes have been ongoing in the northern part of Myanmar's Rakhine State since October 2016. Insurgent attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) have led to sectarian violence perpetrated by Myanmar's military and the local Buddhist population against predominantly Muslim Rohingya civilians. The conflict has sparked international outcry and was described as an ethnic cleansing by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. In August 2017, the situation worsened and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled Myanmar into Bangladesh, with an estimated 500,000 refugees having arrived by 27 September 2017. In January 2019, Arakan Army insurgents raided border police posts in Buthidaung Township, joining the conflict and beginning their military campaign in northern Rakhine State against the Burmese military.
The Muslim Rohingya minority in the region has historically experienced persecution. Laws such as the 1982 Myanmar nationality law ban Rohingya people from obtaining citizenship, and military operations in 1978, 1991 and 1992 against the Rohingya have led to their displacement throughout Rakhine State. Sectarian violence between Buddhist Rakhines and Muslim Rohingyas in 2012 and the 2013 have also caused mass displacements. (Full article...) -
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The State Peace and Development Council (Burmese: နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ [nàɪɰ̃ŋàɰ̃dɔ̀ ʔédʑáɰ̃θàjajé n̥ḭɰ̃ pʰʊ̰ɰ̃bjó jé kaʊ̀ɰ̃sì]; abbreviated SPDC or နအဖ, [na̰ʔa̰pʰa̰]) was the official name of the military government of Burma (Myanmar) which, in 1997, succeeded the State Law and Order Restoration Council (Burmese: နိုင်ငံတော် ငြိမ်ဝပ်ပိပြားမှု တည်ဆောက်ရေးအဖွဲ့; abbreviated SLORC or နဝတ) that had seized power under the rule of Saw Maung in 1988. On 30 March 2011, Senior General and Council Chairman Than Shwe signed a decree that officially dissolved the council.
SLORC succeeded the Pyithu Hluttaw as a legislature and the Council of State as a ruling council, after dissolving the state organs of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. In 1997, SLORC was abolished and reconstituted as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The powerful regional military commanders, who were members of SLORC, were promoted to new positions and transferred to the capital of Rangoon (now Yangon). The new regional military commanders were not included in the membership of the SPDC. (Full article...) -
Image 9The University of Yangon (also Yangon University; Burmese: ရန်ကုန် တက္ကသိုလ်, pronounced [jàɰ̃ɡòʊɰ̃ tɛʔkəθò]; formerly Rangoon College, Rangoon University and Rangoon Arts and Sciences University), located in Kamayut, Yangon, is the oldest university in Myanmar's modern education system and the best known university in Myanmar. The university offers mainly undergraduate and postgraduate degrees (Bachelor's, Master's, Post-graduate Diploma, and Doctorate) programs in liberal arts, sciences and law. Full-time bachelor's degrees were not offered at the university's main campus after the student protests of 1996. The bachelor's degree was re-offered from 2014 on. Today degrees in Political Science are offered to undergraduate students, as well as postgraduate diplomas in areas such as social work and geology.
Initially most major universities in the country depended on Yangon University. Until 1958 when Mandalay University became an independent university, all institutions of higher education in Myanmar were under Yangon University. After the University Education Act of 1964, all professional colleges and institutes of the university such as the Institute of Medicine 1, Rangoon Institute of Technology and Yangon Institute of Economics became independent universities, leaving the Yangon University with liberal arts, sciences and law. In Myanmar, responsibility for higher education depends on various ministries. The University of Yangon depends from the Ministry of education. (Full article...) -
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The Saffron Revolution (Burmese: ရွှေဝါရောင်တော်လှန်ရေး) was a series of economic and political protests and demonstrations that took place during August, September, and October 2007 in Myanmar. The protests were triggered by the decision of the national military government to remove subsidies on the sales prices of fuel. The national government is the only supplier of fuels and the removal of the price subsidy immediately caused diesel and petrol prices to increase by 66–100% and the price of compressed natural gas for buses to increase 500% in less than a week.
The various protests were led by students, political activists, including women, and Buddhist monks and took the form of a campaign of nonviolent resistance, sometimes also called civil resistance. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch
- ... that Maw Htun Aung, a Shan Nationalities League for Democracy candidate in the 2020 Myanmar general election, is Kachin, not Shan?
- ... that while defending Zaw Myint Maung following his arrest by the Myanmar junta, lawyer Ywet Nu Aung was herself arrested and charged?
- ... that Rangoon kept its own time for more than two decades after Burma Standard Time first came into effect?
- ... that Molly Burman resumed releasing music three years later after finding that "Happy Things" had accrued a million streams on Spotify?
- ... that clashes between the Myanmar military and local armed groups broke out in Lay Kay Kaw six years after it was established as a "town of peace" between the parties?
- ... that the Burmese Buddhist monk Sagyo Thu-Myat successfully lobbied for the recalibration of the Burmese calendar?
- ... that Maung O, Prince of Salin, and his sister Nanmadaw Me Nu became de facto rulers of Burma when King Bagyidaw was suffering from depression?
- ... that as part of the coronation of Mindon Min, the square yuzana around the capital was designated a sanctuary?
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Image 1Two female musicians play the saung at a performance in Mandalay. (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 3Recorder's Court on Sule Pagoda Road, with the Sule Pagoda at the far end, Rangoon, 1868. Photographer: J. Jackson. (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 5The restored Taungoo or Nyaungyan dynasty c. 1650 CE. (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 6Vegetable stall on the roadside at the Madras Lancer Lines, Mandalay, January 1886. Photographer: Hooper, Willoughby Wallace (1837–1912). (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 7Political Map of Burma (Myanmar) c. 1450 CE. (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 9The paddle steamer Ramapoora (right) of the British India Steam Navigation Company on the Rangoon river having just arrived from Moulmein. 1895. Photographers: Watts and Skeen (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 10Aerial view of a burned Rohingya village in Rakhine state, Myanmar, September 2017 (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 11Aung San Suu Kyi addresses crowds at the NLD headquarters shortly after her release. (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 12Myanmar (Burma) map of Köppen climate classification (from Geography of Myanmar)
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Image 13British soldiers remove their shoes at the entrance of Shwedagon Pagoda. To the left, a sign reads "Foot wearing is strictly prohibited" in Burmese, English, Tamil, and Urdu. (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 14Boxing match, 19th-century watercolour (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 15A group of Buddhist worshipers at Shwedagon Pagoda, an important religious site for Burmese Buddhists (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 16Temples at Mrauk U, was the capital of the Mrauk U Kingdom, which ruled over what is now Rakhine State. (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 17Pagan Kingdom during Narapatisithu's reign. Burmese chronicles also claim Kengtung and Chiang Mai. Core areas shown in darker yellow. Peripheral areas in light yellow. Pagan incorporated key ports of Lower Burma into its core administration by the 13th century. (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 19British soldiers dismantling cannons belonging to King Thibaw's forces, Third Anglo-Burmese War, Ava, 27 November 1885. Photographer: Hooper, Willoughby Wallace (1837–1912). (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 20Saint Mary's Cathedral in Downtown Yangon is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in Burma. (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 22British soldiers on patrol in the ruins of the Burmese town of Bahe during the advance on Mandalay, January 1945. (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 23Hlei pyaingbwè - a Burmese regatta (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 25A bull fight, 19th-century watercolour (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 26Protesters in Yangon carrying signs reading "Free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi" on 8 February 2021. (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 27Grandfather Island, Dawei (from Geography of Myanmar)
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Image 28The shores of Irrawaddy River at Nyaung-U, Bagan (from Geography of Myanmar)
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Image 29Myinhkin thabin - equestrian sport (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 3019th-century funeral cart and spire, which would form part of the procession from the home to the place of cremation (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 31A theatrical performance of the Mon dance (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 32Portuguese ruler and soldiers mounting an Elephant. Philips, Jan Caspar (draughtsman and engraver) (from History of Myanmar)
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Image 34Sculpture of Myanmar mythical lion (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 36Former US President Barack Obama poses barefoot on the grounds of Shwedagon Pagoda, one of Myanmar's major Buddhist pilgrimage sites. (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 37A large fracture on the Mingun Pahtodawgyi caused by the 1839 Ava earthquake. (from Geography of Myanmar)
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Image 38A wedding procession, with the groom and bride dressed in traditional Burmese wedding clothes, reminiscent of royal attire (from Culture of Myanmar)
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Image 39Salween river at Mae Sam Laep on the Thai-Myanmar border (from Geography of Myanmar)
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Image 40Protesters in Yangon with a banner that reads non-violence: national movement in Burmese, in the background is Shwedagon Pagoda. (from History of Myanmar)
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