Burma/Myanmar

In my last post I mentioned that I was pleased to be able to watch Channel Four News when I get in without having to record it first. The reason I was pleased to see it this evening was because there was an excellent report from Burma where as we know, there are enormous anti-government protests.

It's an important story, as Burma is one of the most repressive regimes in the world, where Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest since 1990.

But there's another thing that's just really beginning to annoy me. The country's name.

You see, it's the corrupt generals themselves that renamed the English language version of the country as Myanmar. I'm happy to go with the name that most Burmese, and free Burma organisations use themselves prefer - Burma. The BBC and most major news organisations in the UK use Burma. But plenty of web reports use Myanmar. And I even saw Myanmar over someone's shoulder in Metro today.

[Update] I've just seen that the BBC News website covers this very issue in some depth.