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Saffron Revolution
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still from the documentary Burma VJ shows monks who led the protest.
Danish director Anders Ostergaard sorted through hours of handheld
footage to tell the story of the Saffron Revolution. (Associated Press)For the young video journalists portrayed in the documentary Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country, getting news out to the world is more important than their personal safety.Throughout the 2007 protests led by peaceful monks, a network of young Burmese reporters armed with cameras shot footage of their fellow citizens standing up to a brutal military regime.
Danish filmmaker Anders Ostergaard was fortunate to have made contact with this network of reporters, called Democratic Voice of Burma, before the protests started.
His documentary Burma VJ opens in Toronto and Vancouver on Friday and will soon have commercial release in other Canadian cities.
Ang San Suu Kyi addresses supporters during the 2007 protests. (Burma VJ/Cooperative Films) Ostergaard's
main contact was a man code-named "Joshua" who spent 2007 in a safe
house in Thailand but played the critical role of relaying the footage
out to international news organizations."Before the monks' protest, we had initiated a protest before that," Joshua said in an interview Thursday with CBC's Q cultural affairs show. "I was travelling Burma and realized that the movement was bigger and bigger.
"We were afraid it would be like in 1988, when the international community didn't see it."
Burmese agents everywhere
Joshua, who is still in hiding, said the Thai town where he was based during the protests was teeming with Burmese agents, and the camera operators on the streets were also at risk.Foreign news crews were banned, the internet was shut down and Burma — also known as Myanmar — was closed to the outside world, but he was able to communicate with his VJs via clandestine phone calls.
"For me, it was really hard to be in the head office in Thailand, away from my people. I wanted to be with my camera on the streets of Rangoon while there are protests, but I had to do it because it was the assignment from my network," he said.
The footage was smuggled out of Burma, Joshua sent it to Norway and, from there, it was broadcast back to Burma and the world via satellite, boosting general awareness and outrage.
"It was an incredible coincidence that I was already working with these guys," Ostergaard told Q.
"I figured out after years of pondering how to make a film on Burma and … how really to get inside I discovered the phenomenon of the citizen journalist or the VJs inside the country."
Ostergaard sifted through hours of footage, some of it from shaky handheld cameras, to tell the story of the VJs and the Saffron Revolution.
Lacked resources
"It was an incredible achievement for these people who had so few resources. They only had money for the bus ticket .They even have to delete very important material because they run out of tape … but even so I still had hours of tape to choose from," he said.Working with Joshua, he re-enacted many of the scenes in Thailand, including the phone conversations and assessments of their impact on google.
"The whole situation with Joshua in his safe house in Thailand ... even if we were able to follow these things as they were happening, it would have been a breach of security that we couldn't allow ourselves," Ostergaard said.
He admits he worried about exposing the people he was working with, both in 2007 and with the release of the film.
"It's kind of a chain of danger. I had my worries about what I exposed about the VJs and they had their concerns about the people on the streets, all these hundreds of thousands of faces they are exposing in the protests," he said.
Ostergaard quotes Ang San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition who has lived for years under house arrest in Rangoon.
"The great conclusion we have to have is something Ang San Suu Kyi herself said. She said, 'We must free ourselves from fear,' and that is the whole thing," he said.
The film was hailed at the Sundance Film Festival and had a prominent opening in London. It has also been smuggled into Burma, where Ostergaard said he hopes it is pirated to be seen by as many people as possible.
Joshua also is doing his best to get the film into his country.
"There are some people who died and some people are still in prison. And Ang San Suu Kyi is still in custody and the junta are still in power in Burma. At the same time, I find that a lot of people are more outspoken than before," he said.
Burma VJ (a 1 hour version) will air on the Passionate Eye on CBC Newsworld on Monday, September 28 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
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Blood-Stained September Days
2007 Burmese anti-government protests
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 | This article's lead section may not adequately summarize key points of its contents. (June 2013) |
| Saffron Revolution | |||||
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| Protesters in Yangon with a banner that reads non-violence: national movement in Burmese, in the background is Shwedagon Pagoda | |||||
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In 2007, a series of anti-government protests started in Burma (also known as Myanmar) on 15 August 2007. The immediate cause of the protests was mainly the unannounced decision of the ruling junta, the State Peace and Development Council, to remove fuel subsidies, which caused the price of diesel and petrol to suddenly rise as much as 66%,[1] and the price of compressed natural gas for buses to increase fivefold in less than a week.[2]
Led by students and opposition political activists, including women, the protest demonstrations took the form of a campaign of nonviolent resistance, sometimes also called civil resistance.[3] They were at first dealt with quickly and harshly by the junta, with dozens of protesters arrested and detained. Starting 18 September, the protests had been led by thousands of Buddhist monks, and those protests had been allowed to proceed until a renewed government crackdown on 26 September.[4] During the crackdown, there were rumors of disagreement within the Burmese military, but none were confirmed. Some news reports referred to the protests as the Saffron Revolution, orရွှေဝါရောင်တော်လှန်ရေး ([sw̥èi wà jàʊɴ tɔ̀ l̥àɴ jéi]).[5][6]
***1
On August 15th, 2007, the Burmese military dictators raised gasoline and natural gas prices by as much as 500 percent, citing global rises in fuel prices and a constricted supply. Serving as the straw that broke the camel’s back in this socially repressive, economically depressed, and technologically deprived South East Asian nation of about 50 million, small protests erupted in many cities around the country. Growing in fervor and size every day during August, despite threats of action by the generals, these first protests in almost 10 years in Burma brought international attention once again to the despotic regime and their suffering people.
As the protests gained momentum, the junta physically assaulted protesters and attempted to incite rioting using plain-clothed security forces. The junta used these same tactics rather effectively during the failed 1988 uprisings, but things would be different this time. This time, the monks are taking the lead.
Buddhism has in it a special place reserved for reverence of enlightened rulers who make laws using and upholding Buddha’s teachings. For centuries, Burmese leaders have claimed legitimacy through the practice, protection, and promotion of Buddhism, in a similar tradition to the kings of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The military junta, in the shadow of the kings, claims to be upholding the teachings of the Buddha and his followers. It is the monks, as the clergy in Buddhism, who, in performing sacrament and accepting alms, signal to the people that the government is upholding these teachings, including tolerance, understanding, compassion, and purposeful social actions. But any glance at the various annual reports on the disastrous human rights situation in the country makes it clear that the junta is not walking in the shadow of Buddha or the ancient Burmese kings, but more marching with the likes of Pol Pot and Mao. And so, after 20 years of deadly silence, the monks are engaging in a boycott of the government. The junta can no longer claim to be working in the name of Buddha.
It appears that the lack of separation of church and state in Burma has actually helped the chances of this Saffron Revolution’s success. Because the monks are boycotting the junta, and since the junta claims legitimacy based on Buddhism, it is precisely the lack of separation between the church and state that may bring down the government.
No one can say for sure where this Saffron Revolution will lead. Just today in Burma up to 7 monks and nuns were killed, tens more injured, and hundreds more arrested. But the people didn’t retreat; 100,000 took to the streets despite the mounting violence. The thoughts of the world are with the Burmese people and their monks in their time of need.
As the popular Burmese freedom chant goes, “Do Ye, Do Ye, Democracy Yashi Ye!”—”Our Cause, Our Cause, Democracy Now!”
[UPDATE: As of September 28th, the military has cut internet communications off, occupied key monasteries (sieged in the night), arrested hundreds of monks, and killed at least 200 unarmed protesters and monks. But the people continue to march, with near to 100,000 taking to the streets of Rangoon for an 11th day.]
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