Myanmar (Burma): Police flags

Last modified: 2023-06-03 by zachary harden
Keywords: myanmar | star: white |
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2:3 image by Zachary Harden, 11 August 2020

• About
• Various flags
• Previously reported Police Flag
• Bureau of Special Investigation
• Badges of various departments

See also:

• Myanmar
• Index of all Myanmar pages

About

I'm not sure if the flag is ever used undefaced or not, that is, without any badge in the upper hoist corner. Speaking of the badges, they are also affixed to the flag in a double sided configuration, meaning they appear in the obverse on both sides of the flag. Lastly, I saw several examples of this flag where the tribars were equal in length, like an Italian flag. In these examples, the white star was incorporated entirely within the center blue bar such as with Cameroon's or Senegal.

Very often, Myanmar Police stations will have a flag pole with a yard arm. The Myanmar national flag will fly at the top while a couple of samples of Police flag will fly off the yard arm. On one occasion though, the pole had three police flags flying from it.
Clay Moss, 19 June 2003

The Myanmar Police Force was established in 1964 as an independent department under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It was reorganised on 1 October 1995 and informally became part of the Armed Forces of Myanmar. (Source: Wikipedia). The flag itself is a yellow/blue/red tricolor and has a single white star in the center of the blue section. However, as Clay Moss stated, there are a lot of variants where the stripes are even, not even or the star is very large.
Zachary Harden, 11 August 2020

Various flags

   images by Clay Moss

Police flags have also been reported by Clay Moss who visited Myanmar in 2003.  He saw many samples of this flag flying all over the country. The version above is that of the Myanmar Railways Police. Beside it is a blow up of the badge.
Clay Moss, 19 June 2003

images by Clay Moss

The same flag with a different badge is used for the Myanmar FBI (CID) As far as the "FBI" badge is concerned, I don't know for sure if that would be the right designation. The manufacturer told me it was the "FBI", but I saw this flag fairly regularly as well in front of buildings sporting the same badge emblem in the form of a sign. The buildings I saw never struck me as being "FBI" types, not that I would necessarily know what a Burmese "FBI" building should look like. [Ed. note; the official name is the "Criminal Investigation Department" (CID)] Clay Moss, 19 June 2003

Previously reported Police Flag

images by Ivan Sache

Horizontally divided red-blue-yellow, 1:2:1, with a quadruple concentric blue and white star in the middle (I mean a blue star within a white one within a blue one within a white one). The flag appeared after 1974 (adoption year of the new and current national flag)
Source. M. Lupant, cited by J. Renault in Franciae Vexilla #20/66, December 2000.  Also described by Crampton (1990f).
Ivan Sache, 20 December 2000

Bureau of Special Investigation

source; image by Zachary Harden, 19 February 2022

Badges of various departments