History UsefulNotes / ThatSouthEastAsianCountry

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->'''Elaine Benes:''' I think they call it Myanmar now.
->'''J. Peterman:''' It'll always be Burma to me.
-->--''Series/{{Seinfeld}}''

This country is known in English by two names. Firstly, its colonial name, Burma.[[note]][[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus "Why'd you say Burma?" "I panicked."]][[/note]] Secondly, the name the ruling military government has given it in 1989, Myanmar. The renaming is understandable, because "Burma" led to confusion as the country is made up of one large ethnic group called the ''Burmans'' (or Bamar) and a huge number of smaller ones, who are collectively called ''Burmese''; Myanmar is a more neutral term. However sensible the renaming, a ''lot'' of media outlets and governments continue to use "Burma" as a symbolic protest against the military dictatorship that ruled it from 1962 to 2010. Creator/TheBBC now calls it [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12990563 "Myanmar"]], but note that the very first paragraph also refers to it as Burma. Basically, it's Asia's version of UsefulNotes/BritainVersusTheUK, or the Derry/Londonderry name dispute in UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland.

From 1992 to 2010 Burma was a military junta ruled by General Than Shwe, who pursued a largely isolationist foreign policy, with the exception of friendly relations with the [[RedChina People's Republic of China]].

In 2010, the junta stepped down, and handed power to a civilian government after flawed elections. However, the military continues to have strong ties with the government. Thein Sein (pronounced "Tane Sane") is the former president, famous for his democratic reforms and reconciliation with the west.

There is great controversy over the government's brutal treatment of various minorities, such as the native Karen. Burma has been involved in a civil war since 1948, the oldest ongoing war in the world. They moved their capital from Rangoon to a purpose built city, Naypyidaw, in 2005, ostensibly because of a prophecy that Burma would be conquered by a foreign invader from the sea, but more likely because it could be designed to make urban insurgency very hard, unlike the sprawling Rangoon. Today, Naypyidaw is the capital, while Rangoon, now named Yangon, is the largest city.

In fiction, it is generally a nasty HolidayInCambodia, portrayed as ruled by an oppressive and genocidal military junta with little regard for human rights or for political dissidents. Then again, [[JustifiedTrope in a place where using a modem without permission carried a 15-year prison term under the junta's regime...]]

The country is ''[[BiggerIsBetter big]]''; at 676,578 km
(261,227 sq mi)[[note]]just a tad smaller than [[EverythingIsBigInTexas Texas]][[/note]], it's the second-largest nation in Southeast Asia (after UsefulNotes/{{Indonesia}}, which is just plain gigantic, even if most of it is water). While the southern half consists of fertile plains and lowlands as in typical of other parts of Southeast Asia, the northern half is littered with hills and mountains, one of which is a part of the Himalayan Range, which means that it has an alpine climate in contrast to the tropics of the lowlands. The highest mountain of Southeast Asia, Hkakabo Razi, is located in the far north, in the border with UsefulNotes/{{China}}.

As an Indochinese country, this place exemplifies influences from both countries: it is predominantly Theravada Buddhist and writes with the Indic Burmese script, but the national language of the country is Burmese, a Sino-Tibetan language (though the language is far removed from either that the similarities are hard to spot). Burmese is the indigenous language of the Bamars, who make up 70% of the population. The remaining 30% is made up of a hodgepodge of other minority ethnic groups including Tai, Mon, Shan, Karen, Kachin, Indian, Kayan, Chinese, etc...that are severely discriminated by the government, which is disproportionately made of Bamars.

In fact, the country has recently come under fire for indulging in what can be best described as ''genocide'' on the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people Rohingya]], an Indo-Aryan ethnic group who are closely related to the Bengalis and actually live near the border with UsefulNotes/{{Bangladesh}}, which makes it seem as if they are Bangladeshis who crossed the border. This last fact is greatly used by the Bamars to make people think that they are illegal immigrants and thus non-entities. In truth, the Rohingyas ''are'' recent settlers...[[MetaphoricallyTrue that arrived in the 19th century as part of the demand for work when the British conquered the country]]. Stating that they're non-entities is akin to saying that the [[UsefulNotes/{{Israel}} Israelis]] are non-entities because most of them only arrived in the late 1940s. Nevertheless, they are harshly persecuted in everything from politics, economy, and even religion (the fact that they're either Muslims or Hindu is an oft-stated easy target) that analysts have described them as "the most unwanted people in the whole world."

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'''Appearances by this country and its inhabitants in fiction:'''
* In Stuart Slade's ''Literature/TheSalvationWar'' Naypyidaw has to be taken out during one of the battles against the forces of either Heaven or Hell.
* Its people appear as the villains in ''Film/RamboIV'', which proved highly popular with Karen rebels (especially since the government [[BannedInChina banned it]]).
* Mentioned in ''Series/SpittingImage'''s "I've Never Met a Nice South African", as featuring unicorns. Creator/TheBBC noted it as rather ironic, as a song that was ridiculing the evils of UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra referred to a country that would later do even worse things.
* Mentioned by Alfred in ''Film/TheDarkKnight'', when he had visited it when it was under colonial rule and [[CrypticBackgroundReference encountered a mad diamond thief]].
* "The Road to Mandalay", poem by Creator/RudyardKipling.
* Appears in an episode of ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' in which [[CloudCuckooLander J. Peterman]] has [[GoingNative Gone Native]] (and insane) in a parody of ''Literature/{{Heart of Darkness}}''. The business over the name is also mentioned.
* Burma has a FictionalCounterpart in [=Ligon=], a FictionalCountry in the works of Creator/KirBulychev, based on his time there. Bulychev himself, [[HeAlsoDid his fame as a science fiction writer aside]], was also one of the leading specialists on Medieval Burma.
* French-Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle did a book, "Burma Chronicles," about his year living there with his wife and son for his wife's job with Medecins Sans Frontieres France.
* Author Creator/GeorgeOrwell was sent out here as a policeman responsible to the British colonial administration. While here, he became a friend of the family of Creator/SpikeMilligan (then aged around ten), whose father had been posted here. The experience of Burma shaped his dislike of British imperialism and his later opposition to it. He refers to it in two books, ''Literature/BurmeseDays'' and ''Shooting An Elephant''.
* An episode of the short-lived ''Series/ThePhilanthropist'' series has Teddy go there in after he's publicly accused of endorsing the Myanmar junta (the show was filmed prior to the junta step-down), as his company has dealings with the Myanmar government, and their forced labor. After visiting the country and finding out the truth for himself, Teddy is forced to further cooperate with the junta in order to get his bodyguard out of prison.
* Mentioned frequently in the ''Literature/McAuslan'' series -- the author and his expy/main character served in Burma and it is something of a [[SpiritualSuccessor spiritual prequel]] to his memoir ''Quartered Safe Out Here.''
* Briefly mentioned in the ''Manga/{{Arachnid}}'' manga. Dinoponera was born in Burma, but, while still a baby, was taken from her DoomedHometown by a wandering mercenary to be raised in UsefulNotes/{{Thailand}}.
* ''VideoGame/SplinterCell1'' has three late-game missions in Yangon, 2 of them taking place at/around a Chinese Embassy where a renegade Chinese general who wants to nuke Taiwan is hiding out, and one at a abattoir where US soldiers and Chinese diplomats are being held hostage.
* "Celerium" in ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII'' takes place in the mountains there, where you are tasked to attack a hidden Cordis Die facility located there.
* ''Film/TheHastyHeart'' is about a group of Allied soldiers in a field hospital at the end of and immediately after the war, one of whom is dying but has been LockedOutOfTheLoop.
* In which the sequel of ''Film/HardTarget'', ''Hard Target 2'' takes place, where our [[TheExile protagonist]], Wes Baylor, a [[MyGreatestFailure guilt-ridden]] [[UsefulNotes/MixedMartialArts MMA fighter]] was tricked into [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame becoming the prey of an illegal human hunting trip]] across the jungle of Myanmar.
* ''VideoGame/RisingStorm'' has two maps set in the Burmese Jungles, Kobura and Maggot Hill, with the US Army fighting the Imperial Japanese Army. Both these maps feature Merrill's Mararuders, a unit in the US Army specializing in JungleWarfare.
* ''VideoGame/SyphonFilter: The Omega Strain'' has a mission set in Taguang in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrawaddy_River Irawaddy Basin]].
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[[AC:The Burmese/Myanmar flag]]
[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/flag_of_myanmar.png]]
->In 2010, as part of the nation's makeover, the old flag (featuring a red field with a canton showing a cogwheel and crops surrounded by stars) is replaced with a flag composed of yellow, green and red stripes, symbolizing solidarity, peace and courage, respectively, while retaining the star of the Union of Myanmar.
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[[AC:State Seal of Myanmar/Burma]]
[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/state_seal_of_myanmar.png]]
->It was adopted in 1948 after independence and was modified in 2008.
----
[[AC:The Burmese/Myanmar National Anthem]]
->တရားမျှတ လွတ်လပ်ခြင်းနဲ့မသွေ၊
->တို့ပြည်၊ တို့မြေ၊
->များလူခပ်သိမ်း၊ ငြိမ်းချမ်းစေဖို့၊
->ခွင့်တူညီမျှ၊ ဝါဒဖြူစင်တဲ့ပြည်၊
->တို့ပြည်၊ တို့မြေ၊
->ပြည်ထောင်စုအမွေ၊ အမြဲတည်တံ့စေ၊
->အဓိဋ္ဌာန်ပြုပေ၊ ထိန်းသိမ်းစို့လေ။

->ကမ္ဘာမကျေ၊ မြန်မာပြည်၊
->တို့ဘိုးဘွား အမွေစစ်မို့ ချစ်မြတ်နိုးပေ။
->ကမ္ဘာမကျေ၊ မြန်မာပြည်၊
->တို့ဘိုးဘွား အမွေစစ်မို့ ချစ်မြတ်နိုးပေ။
->ပြည်ထောင်စုကို အသက်ပေးလို့ တို့ကာကွယ်မလေ၊
->ဒါတို့ပြည် ဒါတို့မြေ တို့ပိုင်နက်မြေ။
->တို့ပြည် တို့မြေ အကျိုးကို ညီညာစွာတို့တစ်တွေ
->ထမ်းဆောင်ပါစို့လေ တို့တာဝန်ပေ အဖိုးတန်မြေ။
--
->Accompanied with justice and freedom;
->our nation, our motherland.
->To bring peace to all people;
->the nation having equal right and pure policy,
->our nation, our motherland.
->Let us preserve with vow
->for perpetuity of our heritage of the Union.

->As long as the world exists, we love Myanmar/Burma,
->the true heritage of our ancestors.
->As long as the world exists, we love Myanmar/Burma,
->the true heritage of our ancestors.
->We shall safeguard the Union by sacrificing our lives.
->This is our nation, our motherland and our own land.
->Let us serve unitedly for the interest of our nation, our motherland.
->That is our duty for the precious land.
----
[[AC:Government]]
* Unitary parliamentary constitutional republic
** President: Win Myint
** State Counsellor: Aung San Suu Kyi
** 1st Vice President: Myint Swe
** 2nd Vice President: Henry Van Thio
----
->Quit calling us Burma\\
You colonialist snakes\\
The BBC\\
Can go suck its namesake
-->''[[Advertising/BurmaShave Myanmar-Shave]]''

* ''VideoGame/SplinterCell'' has three late-game missions in Yangon, 2 of them taking place at/around a Chinese Embassy where a renegade Chinese general who wants to nuke Taiwan is hiding out, and one at a abattoir where US soldiers and Chinese diplomats are being held hostage.

[[quoteright:330:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Myanmar-map_7708.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:328:This map is created right before the country moved its capital]]

In fact, the country has recently come under fire for indulging in what can be best described as ''genocide'' on the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people Rohingya]], an Indo-Aryan ethnic group who are closely related to the Bengalis and actually live near the border with UsefulNotes/{{Bangladesh}}, which makes it seem as if they are Bangladeshis who crossed the border. This last fact is greatly used by the Bamars to make people think that they are illegal immigrants and thus non-entities. In truth, the Rohingyas ''are'' recent settlers...[[MetaphoricallyTrue that arrived in the 19th century as part of the demand for work when the British conquered the country]]. Stating that they're non-entities is akin to saying that the [[UsefulNotes/{{Israel}} Israelis]] are non-entities because most of them only arrived in the late 1940s. Nevertheless, they are harshly persecuted in everything from politics, economy, and even religion (the fact that they're Muslims is an oft-stated easy target) that analysts have described them as "the most unwanted people in the whole world."

* Radical author Creator/GeorgeOrwell was sent out here as a policeman responsible to the British colonial administration. While here, he became a friend of the family of Creator/SpikeMilligan (then aged around ten), whose father had been posted here. The experience of Burma shaped his dislike of British imperialism and his later opposition to it. He refers to it in two books, ''Literature/BurmeseDays'' and ''Shooting An Elephant''.

[[AC:Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom]]