Since its inception in 1974, Southeast Asian Affairs (SEAA) has been an indispensable annual reference for generations of policy-makers, scholars, analysts, journalists, and others. Succinctly written by regional and international experts, SEAA illuminates significant issues and events of the previous year in each of the Southeast Asian nations and the region as a whole. Southeast Asian Affairs 2008 provides an informed and readable analysis of the events and developments in the region in 2007. In the regional section, the first two articles provide the political and economic overview of Southeast Asia. They are followed by an article on India's geopolitics and Southeast Asia, and two articles on ASEAN. Eleven country reviews as well as four country-specific thematic chapters follow, delving into domestic political, economic, security, and social developments during 2007 and their implications for countries in the region and beyond.

Dr Maung Maung (1925-94) was a man of many parts: scholar, soldier, nationalist, internationalist, parliamentarian, and public servant. His life spanned seven decades of political, economic and social turbulence in the country he loved and served, Myanmar. A pioneer amongst post-colonial journalists in Southeast Asia, he was equally at home in the libraries and seminars of universities in the United States, Europe and Australia during the Cold War. As a jurist, Dr Maung Maung knew the law must remain relevant to changing societal requirements. As an author, he wrote weighty scholarly tomes and light-hearted accounts spiced with his wry observations on human foibles. He was a keen observer of human strengths and weaknesses. A loyal friend, he never maligned his critics or denied their merits. As a man of affairs, he was capable of understanding the weaknesses of the institutions that he served and that ultimately failed to live up to their ideals. This book collects together a number of his now obscure but important historical and journalistic essays with a full bibliography of his works.

Seeking to look beyond the day-to-day headlines and judgemental comments on developments in Myanmar, this volume gets under the surface to look at the underlying issues which the country faces regardless of its political future. After looking back to essay the historical forces and human agencies which have shaped contemporary Myanmar, the volume addresses health care and public policy provision with suggestions as to what potential roles the international community might have in assisting Myanmar's future socio-economic development. Myanmar: Beyond Politics to Societal Imperatives broadens the debate on this state of more than 50 million people beyond the usual narrow didactics about democratization and economic policies.

This book, conceived in Rangoon, nourished and delivered at the Yale Law School, attempts to study the customary laws of Burma in the context of the country's legal system. Customary laws govern the affairs of the family mainly while codes and precedents designed and developed on the imported British common law system enjoy exclusive control and authority over the remaining legal relationships in society. This volume looks at the legal system in outline and the customary law of the Bur mese family in some detail. The customary laws of other indigenous groups, such as the Shans, the Kachins, the Chins, the Kayah, the Mon and the Arakanese, also need to be studied, restated and appraised, for though the laws are similar there are shades of differences, and in build ing the Union of Burma it is important to build strongly on the simi larities while giving due respect to the differences. It is, therefore, hoped, that this volume will launch a series of studies on the customary laws of the peoples of Burma in a large context and with high aim. There are many needs for continuing research in the field of custom ary law. One is to discover the customs of the people as they really are, not just what they are presumed to be in early legal treatises or in later judicial decisions.

Crime does not pay, and politics by assassination pays even less. That is perhaps the one sharp lesson which stands out from the trial of U Saw and his men for the murder of Bogyoke Aung San and his colleagues. The trial is a historie one, and the murders undoubtedly altered the course of Burma' s modem history. I present the judgement of the Special Tribunal in full and the story of the assassinations for the record, in the hope that they will serve historians and our peoples in Burma in several ways. Mr. ]ustice Mya Thein of the High Court gave me the records which he compiled of the trial while serving on the prosecution. That was a few years ago, and I have, since then, wanted to edit and publish a book of the trial. Dr. Myint Thein, Chief ]ustice of the Union, also gave his file of the records to the Defence Services Historical Research Institute, and I was able to check and compare the papers. To both I owe and sincerely acknow ledge thanks. I am also grateful to Mr. ]ustice Aung Tha Gyaw of the Supreme Court who answered my questions with kindness and courtesy, and to U Kyaw Soe, Director of Information, and his staff, who dug up the pictures which are published in this book.

In his former work, Burma in the Family oj Nations, Dr. Maung Maung has already gained an international reputation as a student of public affairs in Burma; in this new book he earns fresh laurels. It is mainly in two parts. In Part I he traces the genesis of the Constitution and in Part II he explains it. The first part outlines the constitutional progress of Burma under British rule, the changes under Dr. Ba Maw during the Japanese occupation, and further developments until the attainment of independence by the Anti Fascist People's Freedom League. Nowhere else can one find such a clear and comprehensive account of the political evolution of Burma since 1931, doubly significant by the Saya San rebellion and the birth of the Thakin movement; its value is enhanced by the reproduction of three documents not otherwise readily accessible: the interim Constitution under the Japanese; the Panglong Agreement, in which the Hill Peoples undertook to co-operate in framing the Constitution for the Union of Burma; and the original draft Constitution which the AFPFL published in May 1947 for consideration by the Constituent Assembly."

This is an attempt to study and interpret the Constitution of the Union of Burma which has now passed its tenth year. A constitution read outside the context of constitutional history is incomplete, and I have, therefore, tried to trace the developments which culminated in the constitution; then study its important features with reference, where necessary, to the background in which they took shape and form; and, while studying how the constitution has been working, touch lightly on contemporary events and trends. It is a vast canvas I am trying to cover and what I am able to draw on it would inevitably be sketchy. But I do not write as a historian whose focus is on detail in a narrow area. Rather, having dug and gathered the facts, I trace their sweep in history. The details I willingly and happily leave to the historians, hoping only that my study will be of some use to them, if only as a target for their learned criticism. Some of the events and people I describe are still too near, and a clear perspective is therefore difficult. What is nearest appears biggest, and I often find it tempting to see and accept that Burma's history as a new independent nation began with the students' strike of 1936 or the resistance movement during the Second World War.