Watershed: Burma News Update

Two weekends ago, after class on Thursday night at Freedom House, I boarded an overnight bus to Bangkok for the weekend (screening Rocky, dubbed in Thai). When I returned to the street of the guesthouse I was staying at on Saturday, there was a cluster of people clogging traffic that turned out to be a momentary audience for student demonstrators for a Free Burma group. It was the 21st anniversary of the 8.8.88 uprising - the height of the days of protests in Burma (August 8, 1988) and the launch of a massive strike. The uprising swelled across Burmese land into the ethnic minority states, with university students leading the charge, joined by monks, teachers, children, professionals, farmers, government workers, and even some military personnel. It was the beginning of a persistent struggle for democracy that spans longer than my own life, punctuated only by occasional eruptions of dissent from under the military’s blanket of suppression and seasoned with the death, disappearance, or imprisonment of thousands of activists, brothers, friends, wives. The students I saw in Bangkok were Thai, but demonstrating in a tourist-infested area with English signs that quotes from democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi that implored: “Please use your liberty to promote ours”.

It has been 19 years since her party – the National League for Democracy – won in a democratic election and the military junta placed her under house arrest. Tuesday, August 11, 2009, the new court decision was made: Aung San is to be under house arrest for another 18 months, a tidily convenient period to keep her out of the 2010 election the junta is planning. Until then, when the winds may change with whatever events and outcomes emerge from the gathering storm clouds of that election, we might expect to continue receiving truckloads of new refugees turned migrant workers and prostitutes, bartered on the streets of Bangkok.

You can join the international outcry against the sentence and for her release with action messages from sites like Amnesty International: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=12656.

Thai Mother's Day 2009

In Thailand Mother's Day is celebrated on the current Queen's Birthday, Her Majesty Queen Sirikit, August 12.  Since Thai culture and tradition is part of the curriculum at Thai Freedom House and the kids really never get to show their appreciation to their mothers for all of their hard work, we decided to have a party.  Part of our mission at Thai Freedom House is to make sure that our students families are stable and have some time to relax together and enjoy each other in their hectic lives, sometimes we take a trip to a waterfall or park or have an event such as this at the school.
We started with a monoprint making workshop so the kids could make some original and beautiful cards for their mothers.  Then the students painted small planters and planted flowers for their mothers and we arranged an evening of snacks, a movie called "Burmese Eyes," filmed in Burma by a local ex-pat Marco Monti and performances by the kids.  This gave a chance for the parents to share their memories of life in Burma with their children by responding to the video and images of current Burma. 
The mothers who could attend were moved to tears when their children presented the cards and homemade gifts to them.  I was also in tears when I received some mothers day cards myself from the students.  It was a very sweet evening and all of the students, families and volunteers enjoyed themselves.

 submitted by Thai Freedom House Director:  Lisa Nesser

Review: Burma VJ

If you haven’t heard about Burma VJ yet – start now! This new documentary film has been gaining increasing recognition at film festivals, in newspapers, and in word on the street.

Composed of hours of footage from small handycams captured by young guerilla journalists in Burma, the documentary offers one of the few close looks inside the totalitarian state of a military junta that’s not exactly the poster child for the freedom of the press. The identity of these reporters is undisclosed, for the security of their lives outside of bars, but we follow “Joshua”, one of the leaders of young journalists as his hopes and concerns are conveyed through the piecemeal footage edited together by film director Anders Ostergaard. Though the journalists started filming in August of 2007, the groups’ activities took on critical importance as their pocket cameras began capturing shaky shots of the protests and events surrounding the September 2007 “Saffron Revolution,” when the political discontent boiled over with monks marching in the streets and foreign journalists expelled from the country.
First released in May of 2009, the Burma VJ film has since seen limited release in major cities in the United States and Europe and has garnered several awards at film festivals, from the “World Cinema Documentary Editing Award” at Sundance Film Festival to the “Movies That Matter Award” from the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival. From reviews in major newspapers to Twitter streams, it has started to gain broader attention and stimulate discussion about a brutal situation that can often fall out of the horizon of the news and popular concerns.
The beauty of the film’s approach is that the footage and narrative has been generated by the citizens of Burma themselves, allowing even those who have never been to Southeast Asia or read about Burma to begin to understand the situations in which they live from the perspective that citizens experience it - their fears, hopes, sights, and sounds. Not only does this have the potential to impact those in countries much further away, but we might hope that it could even influence the perspective of that Thai people in our community here that negatively view those fleeing from the repression of the brutal regime without awareness of the situation they are coming from.
Though it’s not available for sale as a DVD yet, we here at Freedom House will be eagerly awaiting its release, and we hope you’ll look out for it as well, and look for opportunities to share it with others, through a showing at your university, gathering with friends, event with your religious organization – seeking ways to continue the conversation and deepen understanding across borders.
You can visit their official website at http://burmavjmovie.com/, and sign up for notification of the film release on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Burma-VJ-Reporting-Country-Theatrical/dp/B002BWP3WK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249360946&sr=8-1).