FACTBOX: Five facts about southeast Asia's troubled Myanmar

(Reuters) - Following are five key facts about Myanmar, a former British colony which has been under military rule for 46 years. Six months ago, Buddhist monks led the biggest demonstrations against the junta since a 1988 uprising.

-- Having won independence in 1948, what was then called Burma was roiled by political feuding and ethnic guerrilla conflicts until a 1962 coup. It has been run by the army ever since and ethnic insurgencies, in many cases fuelled by the opium trade, continue to rumble on.

-- Although it is home to more than 100 different ethnic groups, nearly 70 percent of its 53 million people are ethnic Burman. Significant minorities are the Shan and predominantly Christian Karen.

-- Ranked as one of Asia's most promising economies in the 1950s, it is now one of the region's poorest nations, due mainly to decades of disastrous socialist central planning by the military government.

It possesses some of Asia's largest reserves of natural gas, as well as the world's finest rubies and extensive teak forests.

-- Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the 62-year-old daughter of independence hero Aung San, has been in prison or under house arrest for more than 12 of the last 18 years.

Her National League for Democracy party won more than 80 percent of the vote in a 1990 election which the military then ignored. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year, while still under house arrest.

-- At least 31 people were killed when the junta sent in troops to crush monk-led pro-democracy demonstrations in September 2007. The marches were the biggest challenge to the junta since a 1988 uprising, suppressed by a crackdown in which an estimated 3,000 people were killed.

Sources: Reuters

(Reporting by Ed Cropley; Editing by Michael Battye)