(December 5, 2016) The Ministry of Education in the capital Naypyidaw and the universities of the country’s major cities, Yangon and Mandalay. These are the stages of the tour in Burma carried out in recent days by Professor Antonio Fiori, delegate for the countries of Asia and Oceania of University of Bologna. Professor Fiori has met with deans of the University of Mandalay, Yangon and Yezin Agricultural University, first Agricultural University in the nation. And in Yangon there was also a meeting with the Italian Ambassador in Burma, with whom they discussed the cooperation between the Alma Mater and other Burmese authorities in the economics of tourism, cultural heritage and agricultural and environmental sciences. A country in South-East Asia of more than 50 million people, Burma, also known as Myanmar, has been governed for several decades by a military dictatorship, and last year alone has seen take place the first free general parliamentary elections, vote that was won by the National League for Democracy of Aung San Suu Kyi. Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi received in 2000 an honorary doctorate in philosophy from the University of Bologna, recognition that she received at a ceremony in the Great Hall of Saint Lucia of the Alma Mater, only in 2013, after having been forced for many years under house arrest, unable to leave the country. The democratic rebirth of Burma passes even now by the universities, which must reinvent themselves after decades of dictatorship and closing with respect to the international context. (Red)
