Burma is the second largest country in Southeast Asia and is located to the east of India and Bangladesh, to the southwest of China and to the west of Laos and Thailand. The country has a population of nearly 55 million. Burma was once the richest country in Asia and is now considered one of the poorest.
Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. It spends half its budget on the military while the population goes without access to proper health care, education and food.
Today Burma is a country ruled by fear. The regime ruthlessly persecutes human rights and democracy activists, imprisoning at least 2100 political prisoners, many of whom are routinely tortured. There is widespread use of forced labor.
Burma has more child soldiers than any other country in the world with children as young as 11 snatched by soldiers on their way home from school and forced to join the army. One in ten babies die before their fifth birthday. In Eastern Burma, the regime is waging a war of ethnic cleansing and using rape as a weapon of war against ethnic women and children. More than 3,300 villages have been destroyed.
Elections were held in 1990, and the National League for Democracy, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, won 82% of seats in parliament. The regime refused to hand over power, and instead unleashed a new wave of oppression.
