The last elections to be held in Burma were in 1990; the year that the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party won a landslide victory, which the junta ignored. Shortly after, Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest and the ruling regime ushered in a new era of draconian political control that brought the country to near ruin.

Twenty years on, and with the NLD now dissolved, the titans of the 1990 elections gathered in Rangoon to mark the ‘stolen’ victory, while Burmese around the world displayed anger at the looming sham elections.