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Burma or Myanmar?
Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi addresses both Houses of Parliament inside Westminster Hall on June 21 in London, England. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Burma’s electoral commission has told opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to stop calling the country Burma and instead call it Myanmar, its official name. The lady demurs.
In a statement published in The New Light of Myanmar, the electoral commission chided Aung San Suu Kyi, stating, “As it is prescribed in the constitution that ‘the state shall be known as The Republic of the Union of Myanmar,’ no one has the right the call the country Burma.”
Nobody has greater moral authority than Aung San Suu Kyi to call the country by its former name.
Aung San Suu Kyi is in her right and should continue to do so in order to express what has been worldwide condemnation of Burma’s military regime.
Disagreement on what to call the country follows Aung San Suu Kyi’s high-profile trip to Europe, where she continuously called the country Burma. Observers believe that authorities are trying to assert themselves after Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the National League for Democracy (NLD) party, was widely praised during her trip.
While the electoral commission informed the NLD “to address the name of the state as prescribed in the constitution … and respect the constitution,” Nyan Win, NLD spokesman, responded by stating that calling the country Burma “does not amount to disrespecting the constitution.”
There is a long history behind this disagreement.
In 1989, the then-ruling military junta decreed that the country should change its name from the Union of Burma to the Union of Myanmar. The move was apparently intended to appease minority non-Burman ethnic groups.
Later, the name was modified to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. However, those opposing the military, including Aung San Suu Kyi, ignored the modification and continued to call the country Burma—to the evident irritation of the military.
Anthropologist Gustaaf Houtman, an expert on Burma’s politics, wrote, “There is a formal term which is Myanmar and the informal, everyday term which is Burma. Myanmar is the literary form, which is ceremonial and official and reeks of government.”
Local opposition groups prefer to use the old, colloquial name, at least until Burma has a legitimate government.
Undaunted by her government’s criticism, Aung San Suu Kyi has continued using the name Burma during her visit to Britain and Norway. Several Western countries, including Britain and the United States, continue to call the country Burma in unofficial statements of support for the democracy movement in the country.
