- published: 18 Sep 2011
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The 8888 Nationwide Popular Pro-Democracy Protests (Burmese: ၈-၄လုံး or ရှစ်လေးလုံး; MLCTS: hrac le: lum: also known as the People Power Uprising) was a series of marches, demonstrations, protests, and riots in the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma (today commonly known as Burma or Myanmar). Key events occurred on 8 August 1988, and therefore it is known as the "8888 Uprising".
Since 1962, the country had been ruled by the Burma Socialist Programme Party regime as a one-party state, headed by General Ne Win. The catastrophic Burmese Way to Socialism had turned Burma into one of the world's most impoverished countries. Almost everything was nationalized and the government combined Soviet-style central planning with superstitious beliefs. In an article published in a February 1974 issue of Newsweek magazine, the Burmese Way to Socialism was described as "an amalgam of Buddhist and Marxist illogic".
The 8888 uprising was started by students in Yangon (Rangoon) on 8 August 1988. Student protests spread throughout the country. Hundreds of thousands of ochre-robed monks, young children, university students, housewives, and doctors demonstrated against the regime. The uprising ended on 18 September, after a bloody military coup by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Thousands of deaths have been attributed to the military during this uprising, while authorities in Myanmar put the figure at around 350 people killed.