On the 8th of august in 1988, a general strike began in Myanmar (Burma) as part of the 8888 Uprising, with mass anti-government demonstrations throughout the country demanding multi-party democracy from the ruling one-party state. Over the following days, the mass demonstrations devolved into violent riots as the military fired into crowds of protesters.
The 8888 Uprising, also known as the People Power Uprising, took place in the context of an economic crisis in the country, governed as a one-party state by the Burma Socialist Programme Party, led by General Ne Win. Students and farmers had been engaging in protest and campaigns of rebellion against various state economic policies since 1985.
On August 8th, 1988 (thus the uprising's name) mass anti-government demonstrations took place throughout the country. Participants came from a wide variety of demographics - Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, students, workers, young and old participated.
The protests began relatively peacefully, with only one casualty reported on the first day, the result of a frightened traffic cop who fired into the crowd and fled. Over the next few days, the protests devolved into violent riots as the military and police fired on the protesters, at one point even shooting doctors and nurses tending to the wounded.
Protesters responded by throwing Molotov cocktails, swords, knives, rocks, poisoned darts and bicycle spokes. In one incident, rioters burned a police station and killed four fleeing police officers.
On August 26th, Aung San Suu Kyi (eventual leader of the country and complicit in the rohingya genocide), the daughter of anti-imperialist revolutionary Aung San, addressed half a million people at Shwedagon Pagoda, becoming an international figure in the uprising, supported by the West. Her party would later go on to win elections in 1990, however these results were ignored by the military government and she was arrested.
On September 18th, the military retook power in the country, with General Saw Maung repealing the 1974 constitution and imposing martial law. The demonstrations were violently suppressed and, by the end of September, at least 3,000 people were killed, however estimates of casualties vary widely.
Eventually after another mass protests in the saffron revolution and the 2010-2015 reforms Aung San party the NLD would take power in 2015 and be overthrown by a coup in 2021 and banned 2 years later.
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hunger, poverty
Have you ever been hungry? Didn't eat yesterday, didn't eat much the day before yesterday, couldn't get food today and had no idea what you were going to do for tomorrow? I had that happen a couple times in my life.
I'm not going anywhere with this, just wondering if anyone else has been that poor. It sucked. Being that hungry made stealing make more sense, eating garbage, etc, all for survival but I didn't feel great after having done it despite that.
Used to be a decent hot food section at the supermarket by my place at the time. I used to wait until it was really busy, order a meal for my entire family (mom, brother, myself) be extremely polite, wait the hour or whatever for them to make everything because of how backlogged they are, then just walk out the door as if I had already paid.
A number of times this is how we had dinner at home actually. Very poorly set up where the door was right there and you came from the same direction as people coming from self checkout
Redeeming cheques that people threw away for free biscuits and constantly reusing a large 1L cup at my university's Subway for the 75-cent refill was frequently my only "food" for numerous days back in the US in 2013.