The present Burma government run by the military

Aung San Suu Kyi and the democracy movement in Burma

Modern Burma is a country with complex mosaic of ethnic, linguistic, social, political and historical characteristics. There are eight major ethnic nationalities in Burma. The demographically predominant ethno-linguistic group among the population of 50 million people is called Burman. Burman is the largest ethnic group (68%) who with the Mon (2%) inhabit the central and southeast plain regions. Other ethnic minorities such as Karen (7%), Arakanese or Rakhine (4%), Shan (9%), Chin, Kachin, Pa-O, Palaung, Wa, Karenni inhabit areas along the county's mountainous frontiers. Other groups include Bengali and Tamil (2%) and Chinese (3%). Over 100 distinct languages or dialects are spoken in Burma.

Theravada Buddhism (89% of the population) is the most widespread religion. Buddhists believers include not only Burmans, but also the Rakhine (Arakanese), Mon and Shan and significant numbers of Karen and other minority groups. Additional religions include Christianity (4%), particularly among Kachin, Karen and Karenni, and Islam (4%), particularly among Bengalis, as well as various animist cults. Boundaries between religious beliefs are not clearly defined, and many minority people, in particular, practise a mixture of traditions.

1. Historical background

a. Pre-colonial Burma

Burma has experienced a long history of migration and conflict among various ethnic groups along fluid frontiers, which were finally fixed only during British imperial rule from the 1820s to 1948. The Mon, who entered from the east (Cambodia) in the sixth century BC, established the earliest civilisation in Burma. The Arkanese settled in the West, founding an independent kingdom in the fourth century AD. The Burman entered Burma from the north during the eighth and ninth centuries AD. During this same period the Shan migrated from Yunnan in China to the northeast hills. Numerous tribal groups settled in the mountains of the north and west. From the tenth through eighteenth centuries, a series of conflicts and wars took place between numerous ethnic groups, tribes and civilisations, with the Mon, Burman, Rakhine and Shan competing for the upper hand in terms of territory and labour power throughout different periods.

In the eleventh century, the country was forcibly unified by the reign of Burman King Anawratha (1044-77), which coincides with the Norman conquest in Britain. Anawratha's encounter with Shin Arahan (from Sri Lanka) in 1056 supposedly resulted in the introduction of the Theravada Buddhist monastic ordination tradition to the Pagan dynasty by forcible appropriation from the Mon (Thahton) in the south, but it also marked the beginning of a new Theravada Buddhist monarchic system in Upper Burma. During the Pagan dynasty, the influx of Theravada Buddhism gave the country a cultural and belief system that has endured to the present day, which it shares with its neighbours in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. The successive Pagan, Toungoo, Ava, and Konbaung Burmese dynasties carried Burmese arms and influence into the territories of her neighbours. These domestic and regional conflicts did not cease until the nineteenth century. In the 19th century, the British fought three ...