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/ 10 February 2008
Burma’s military junta unveiled a timetable for the country’s first elections in two decades, but it was unclear on Sunday if detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi would be allowed to stand. The surprise weekend announcement of a constitutional referendum in May to set the stage for elections in 2010 appeared to catch her party off guard.
Military-run Burma put on a show of defiance on Friday on the 60th anniversary of independence from Britain amid global pressure for reform following the junta’s bloody crackdown on dissent. Soldiers raised the national flag at precisely 4.28am local time — the exact moment of freedom from Britain.
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/ 3 November 2007
The United Nations’s special envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, was expected in Rangoon on Saturday for talks with the country’s ruling generals amid a row over the threatened expulsion of another diplomat. Gambari’s visit comes amid conflicting signals from the junta over its willingness to reform, in the wake of street protests against the ruling regime.
Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party dismissed the Burma junta’s offer of talks as surreal on Friday as a United Nations envoy warned of ”serious international consequences” from the junta’s brutal suppression of pro-democracy protesters.
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/ 24 September 2007
Hunkered down in their new capital, far removed from the largest anti-government movement since 1988, Burma’s ruling generals are caught in a rare dilemma. They can either come down hard on the Buddhist monks leading the protests — and risk turning pockets of dissent into nationwide outrage as reports.