This week, the Global Light of Myanmar, the mouthpiece publication of the junta thatseized control of Burma, referred to the pro-democracy resistance as terrorists, as they always do. They also lambasted Timor-Leste, a small Southeast Asian nation, for accepting a criminal complaint filed by the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) that accuses junta leaders, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The complaint includes evidence of massacres, airstrikes on hospitals, and sexual violence.
The Global Light of Myanmar wrote, “Timor Leste’s leaders have cavorted with terrorists who have butchered and seek to kill Myanmar citizens further. Its President, Jose Ramos Horta, has disgustingly validated representatives of a group of terrorist grifters and philanderers now sliding into irrelevance with each passing day.”
The same junta leaders accused of war crimes expelled Timor-Leste’s ambassador.
Also this week, Burma resistance soldiers continued to fight while horribly outgunned by the junta’s drones and aircraft and suffering from a severe lack of munitions. TheFree Burma Rangersjust came off several weeks of frontline medic work at a battle in Karen State, where they treated more than one hundred wounded. This morning, I saw two soldiers with prosthetic legs heading back into action. The people’s will has not been broken. As one resistance fighter put it, “We will not stop until Burma is free.”
Several Gateway Pundit readers have asked why I always refer to the country as Burma rather than Myanmar. The short answer is that I call it Burma becausemuch of the resistanceand theFree Burma Rangerscall it Burma. Conversely, organizations or institutions using the name Myanmar, such as The Global Light of Myanmar, are linked to the junta.
For generations, the country was known as Burma, named after the dominant Burman ethnic group. In 1989, a year after violently crushing a pro-democracy uprising, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, the ruling military junta, changed the English name to Myanmar. The generals claimed they were discarding a colonial-era name and promoting ethnic unity, arguing that “Burma” excluded minority groups.
In the Burmese language, however, Myanmar is simply the more formal version of Burma, and the change applies only in English. Because the decision was made by military decree rather than through a public referendum or an act of parliament, opposition groups argue it is illegal. By saying “Burma,” they signal that the military’s laws and decrees are invalid.
For decades, the name Burma has functioned as a linguistic act of defiance against the generals. Aung San Suu Kyi for years preferred “Burma” for the same reason, as it represented the country before the military rewrote its identity.
Over the years, several anti-junta armed groups have even included Burma in their names. The All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF) was formed after the 1988 student uprisings and remains one of the most well-known “Burma”-named groups, made up of students who fled to the jungles to take up arms against the military.
The Burma National Revolutionary Army (BNRA) is a more recent coalition of various resistance forces, including People’s Defense Forces (PDFs), that deliberately chose the name Burma to signal its rejection of the junta’s Myanmar identity.
Source: The Gateway Pundit
