Thierry
Falise's new book of photographs is testament to a thrilling and varied career
on the front line of Burmese history.
One of
the first things that strikes you as you work your way through photojournalist
Thierry Falise’s new book of images – apart, of course, from the stunning
photographs themselves – is the amount of dedication and effort involved.
For 25 years now, the Bangkok-based, Belgian journalist has been
writing about and photographing the struggles of the people of Burma for
dignity and democracy in the face of crushing opposition. He has travelled
across the breadth and width of the nation and to its many borders to meet all
sorts of people and to hear their stories.
The images contained in his new work ‘Burmese Shadows: 25 years
reporting life behind the Bamboo Curtain’, are bewilderingly diverse.
He has spent time with rebel fighters from the United Wa State
Army, hung out with rock stars in Rangoon and watched Karen villagers planting
rice during the monsoon rains.
It seems he has always been at hand when news is breaking. He
was present in 1996 when a young Aung San Suu Kyi delivered a public lecture
from the gates of her Rangoon house, he was there 11 years later when thousands
of Buddhist monks and civilians marched through the streets of Rangoon and
other cities during the September 2007 Saffron Revolution and was somehow back
again, just eight months after that, during the devastation of Cyclone Nargis.
His ubiquitous presence is explained by a footnote in which he
apologies to both his mother and his wife for his repeated and lengthy
reporting trips. Indeed, in another entry he reveals that almost every year
since 2000 he has made at least one month-long trip into the country with the
Free Burma Rangers – so-called volunteer “commando medics” who slip into the
country to provide medical care in the most hostile places. This collection of
memorable images is reward for such efforts.
And yet not all of Falise’s images are of conflict and misery.
Many of the most striking are scenes of every day life – of monks queuing for
alms, of Buddhist statues in the jungle and of frenetic football matches. One
memorable set of photographs contained in his book, published by McNidder and
Grace, documents the shamen and mediums of the Taungybone spirit festival in
Mandalay.
“[This book] strives to show the complexity of Burma’s history,
at least during the 25 years that I have been reporting on the country,”
Falise writes in the foreword. “To serve as reminder of recent
turbulence and human rights abuses, but also to bring light to the diversity,
beauty and life that can be easily found there.”
By email I had the following Q&A with Falise about his work
covering Burma and the recent changes the country has experienced.
Q.
You have been working on Burma for more than 25 years. How did you first become
involved?
A. I first went in Burma in 1987 to cover the Karen resistance
(from the Thai border). I was working in Paris as a staff writer with the
French language department of Associated Press and I decided to travel in Asia
on my holiday as a freelance photographer and writer. At that time there was a
sort of generation of young local reporters who were covering the Karen
conflict. In 1991, after I went back a few times to Burma, but also in other
south east Asian countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines and
Thailand. I resigned from AP to settle in Bangkok as a freelance
photojournalist (and later book writer).
Q.
The issue of Burma has been in the news a lot in the last couple of years, but
was it always as easy to get people interested in the issue?
A. Yes and no. Apart from major events such as the popular
uprisings in 1988 and 2007 or developments linked to Aung San Suu Kyi’s fate,
hot news has been pretty rare these last twenty years. On the other hand, I
have always favoured covering feature stories to hot news (because it has
become almost impossible to compete with established agencies and I also prefer
to spend time on my own rather than covering a story with dozens of colleagues)
and in Burma I have so far always managed to dig out such stories.
Until a few years ago it was also a time when periodicals were
still abundant and with financial means! For instance, I published quite a lot
about the tragic stories of the IDP (Internally Displaced People) in Burma’s
ethnic territories in women’s magazines (through the angle of women nurses
working for a relief group). In the 1990s, there were also very powerful and
exclusive stories on the narcotics’ trade (in the infamous Golden Triangle) or
about the “God’s Army”, a small armed Karen splinter group made up of children
and teenagers and commanded by nine-year-old twins Johnny and Luther Htoo.
Q.
You have returned to Burma a couple of times since the release of Ms Suu Kyi at
the end of 2010. What has struck you the most about the changes?
A. To me the most striking change lies in people’s minds; there
seems to be no fear any more. People now feel free to express themselves
openly, with enthusiasm and defiance. After almost half a century of military
regimes founded on fear, denunciation and distrust, this dramatic evolution
seems to me irreversible. If, in the worst case scenario, the military tries to
regain total power, for instance, I think that the people will be ready to go
down in the street and resist to the death (like in 1988 but unlike in
September 2007).
Q.
What issues do you think get overlooked as people talk about the democratic
changes that are taking place?
A. Although I agree that the country is now on the “right track”
to some sort of liberalisation – let alone democratisation – I don’t share the
over-optimistic view taken by some Western institutions and observers who
believe that the worst is over. The remaining task (before a majority of people
enjoy the fruit of the current opening and positive developments) is huge and will
probably take a long time.
I see a few important issues. For now, life has not changed yet
for the bulk of the population (70% or so) who live in rural areas. The risk –
as it’s commonly observed in the history - is a “two-tier”development for the
urban population’s benefit but at the expense of the rural population.
The complex and crucial ethnic issue is far from being solved.
Even though the government has taken positive steps by signing cease-fire
agreements (I would rather say “cessation of hostilities”) with a few ethnic
armed groups, the situation remains very fragile. The everlasting stumbling
block between the government who advocates that economic development will
ultimately bring peace and the ethnic groups who want as a priority a political
agreement based on the establishment of a federal system (where they would get
more control over their natural resources, traditions, etc) remains solid.
This issue also raises the role of the army and the influence of
the president upon this army. As agreements were signed with the Karen, the
Karenni, the Shan and other ethnic groups, in June 2011 a 17-year-old
cease-fire with the Kachin (an ethnic group in the north of the country along
the Chinese border) was shattered, triggering the resumption of a nasty war
with its catalogue of murder, rape, forced labour and civilian displacement.
This war is currently going on even though the president is said to have
“ordered” the army to stop fighting.
Another ethnic issue (although very different than the others) is
the conflict in the Rakhine state (western Burma) between the Rohingya, a
Muslim population of 800,000 people or so living there for generations and who
since 1982 have been considered a stateless population, and the Buddhist
Rakhine who form the majority. I believe that for the Burmese (and particularly
the Burman ethnic) population, it epitomises the fundamental quest for their
country’s identity.
For decades Burman ethnic people have been brainwashed by
xenophobic military regimes who told them that, along with Buddhism, they ARE
the essence, the only and true nature of the country. Now that in this new era
of opening and transparency, old issues such as the Rohingya are reopening,
people feel threatened in their own identity. Recently in Yangon, a Burmese
friend of mine, a young and well educated businessman, was telling me that “you
(Westerner) have to understand that we (Burman) are genetically Buddhist”.
It was difficult to argue with him that there is no such a thing
as a “Buddhist gene”. Now we see Buddhist monks (probably the same who
heroically demonstrated for democracy in 2007) marching in towns to demand that
the Muslim Rohingya be thrown out of the country. We see self-appointed
historians and academics coming back from exile to be welcomed as heroes while
they are screaming hatred and fascist, anti-Muslim slogans undeserving of
civilised people. This is very sad and worrisome and could actually endanger
the whole process of national reconciliation.
Q.
What do you think is going to happen over the next few years? Will there be a
transformation to a genuine democracy?
A.Well, as no so-called expert or pundit has ever predicted the
major developments which have occurred in Burma, I will certainly not commit
myself to such predictions, I leave this to the astrologers ! If we observe
other countries in south east Asia which have reached a certain level of
economic development, we have to acknowledge that hardly any of them has
reached a “genuine democracy”. This should remain as an ultimate ideal but we
also should not claim for Burma more than we accept for countries such as
Thailand, Indonesia or the Philippines.
Q.
Who deserves the credit for the changes that have taken place?
I won’t be very original by saying that the moment the situation
shifted from stagnation to change was the first official meeting between Aung
San Suu Kyi and president Thein Sein in August 2011. I guess that other
personalities within the new regime seriously realised that the country could
not keep on evolving as a world’s pariah state but also as a “23d province of
China”.
Now we have to remain realistic and keep in mind that what is
happening now is first and foremost the implementation of the seventh (and
last) step of a “roadmap to disciplined democracy” launched in
2003
by the junta. The positive thing is that this latest step in its definition was
wide open to interpretation and implementation. So far I think that the
country’s new regime have adopted a rather positive interpretation of this
step.