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FAHTHAI
the United States for one week on the 200th
anniversary of American independence. Millet,
a French publisher who has been based in the
Asia-Pacific region for more than four decades,
also created a portrait of Thailand titled
7 Days in
the Kingdom
in 1987, and has since produced 10
other similar photobooks.
Returning from their assignment, the elite
pack of photographers reflected on both the
exhilaration and the darker sides of their Burmese
experience: the evening procession of candle-
bearers at Yangon’s peerless Shwedagon Pagoda;
meeting The Moustache Brothers, the popular
comic duo whose satire earned one of them a
stiff jail sentence; the continuity of tradition as
evidenced by the great craftsmen of Mandalay;
and the tribal clans of Chin State living beyond
the range of four-wheel drives.
Others glimpsed the looming dangers of
Myanmar’s much-misunderstood and often
counter-intuitive “opening up” to the outside
world. The threats they identified included
the fact that Chinese, American and Russian
“carpetbaggers” have been streaming in to
Myanmar to exploit its abundant natural
resources and the likelihood that rapid economic
development will no doubt enrich the few but
marginalize the many, especially the country’s
ethnic minorities.
At the end of last year, the country’s leading
democratic icon, former political prisoner and
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, criticised
the opening-up process on the basis of her
perception that her country was still not a
genuinely democratic society. “Burma needs real
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change,” she told the BBC. “We need to make
our people confident that we truly are going to
be a democratic society.” Meanwhile, Human
Rights Watch accused the Burmese government
and its security forces (and extremist groups) last
year of committing “crimes against humanity in
a campaign of ethnic cleansing” against Muslim
minorities. The violence is attributed to the rise
of an extremist Buddhist movement, called 969,
which demands complete religious segregation in
Myanmar. (The movement’s figurehead, monk
Ashin Wirathu, infamously likened Muslims to
“mad dogs”.)
Most of the photographers, however, remain
optimistic that change and cultural evolution
will come. One great change is that, according to
French photographer Gilles Sabrie, “the fear is
gone. This is very hard to show in pictures, but
that’s something to cherish.”
7 Days in Myanmar
is published by EDM and available at leading
book shops in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar. It will
be available on amazon.com from February. A French edition is also
forthcoming. edmbooks.com
