Anonymous in Burma

by Timothy Chase

Children picking through garbage in Sittwe, western Myanmar.

In the interest of full disclosure, my name is not Timothy Chase.

I write this story, indeed any story about Myanmar, under a pseudonym. This is absolutely essential because I want to go back there to continue documenting, writing and talking about the struggles and perseverance of people living under one of the world’s most oppressive regimes.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, sits between India and China in Southeast Asia. It has been ruled by a military dictatorship since 1962. The generals put a civilian face on their regime in elections last November, but as friends in Myanmar say, “same wine, new bottle.”

The generals, their families and their cronies have become fabulously wealthy selling the country’s natural resources — teak, natural gas, oil, minerals. The general population has been left to fend for itself. The average annual income is estimated at $500.

Human Rights Watch calls Myanmar one of the worst human rights abusers. Transparency International ranks it as the second most corrupt nation, behind Somalia. Reporters Without Borders puts it fifth from the bottom for press freedom. The Committee to Protect Journalists says it’s the worst place in the world to be a blogger.
Heavy-handed government censors screen every story that appears in the Burmese press or on local television. A journalist there toes the line or becomes another of the regime’s nearly 2,200 political prisoners. At this writing, 27 reporters, photographers or bloggers are behind bars.

Foreign journalists are not welcome. To get in, you have to lie about your occupation on the visa application and pose as a tourist. Once you’re there, you do everything possible to avoid a security apparatus said to employ one in every four Burmese.

Several foreign newsmen penetrated the bamboo curtain last November to cover the release from house arrest of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Seven were rounded up and expelled. Others were inexplicably allowed to stay and interview Suu Kyi. Perhaps the generals felt stories about her freedom would reflect favorably on them, for a change.

Myanmar is a place that can enthrall you with enchantment one moment and paralyze you with paranoia the next.

“There are eyes and ears everywhere” is the constant reminder from one of my guide friends there. I wouldn’t dare tell her I’m a photojournalist. But I know she knows. She takes the risk of helping me as her way of fighting back.

I’ve been hassled a few times by officious local policemen wanting to know why I was taking pictures of, say, kids scavenging in garbage piles, or why I’m spending so much time at a pagoda, or why I’m talking with monks at a monastery. The “I’m just a stupid tourist” ploy has always served me well. So far.

My colleagues Karen Coates, Jerry Redfern and Jacob Baynham, all University of Montana J-School grads, haven’t been so lucky. Their experiences as journalists in Myanmar left them spooked.

In 2009, Karen, an author and freelance writer, and her husband, Jerry, a photographer, had been invited by the U.S. Embassy to conduct workshops for Burmese writers and photographers in Mandalay. This was their second such trip. The curricula had been cleared by the government. They knew better than to talk politics with their students.

On the side, Karen and Jerry were working on a story about laphet thote, a tangy Burmese delicacy made of fermented tea leaves mixed with sesame seeds and peanuts. (Karen is a food writer of some renown.)

The night the workshops ended, Karen and Jerry returned to their hotel from dinner to find a group of plainclothes and uniformed policemen waiting for them. “They told us we needed to go with them,” Karen says. “They didn’t tell us why. I don’t think they knew why. They just said they had orders.”

The policemen would entertain no appeals. Nor would they let Karen and Jerry make a phone call.

The two Americans had 20 minutes to pack. Then they would be taken on the overnight train to Yangon. There, after hours of bureaucratic confusion and futile embassy attempts to free them, they would be put on a plane to Bangkok. Karen and Jerry were being expelled.

“We were both terrified, especially for the people we had worked with,” Karen says now. “As we pulled away from the hotel, I remember seeing one of our friends standing there. All the color was drained from his face. We had no idea what would happen to him or the others.”

They learned later that there were no ramifications for their Burmese friends or students. But to this day, Karen wonders why she and Jerry were thrown out and may never be allowed back in.

They were sent packing the same day that John Yettaw, a Bible-carrying Missourian, swam across a lake in Yangon to the home of Suu Kyi, who was then still under house arrest for opposing the regime. The bizarre incident gained international attention and cost Suu Kyi another 18 months of confinement for sheltering Yettaw. He was held for a few weeks and then sent home.

Could Karen and Jerry somehow have been caught up in the Yettaw case? Could their interest in laphet thote have been seen as an investigation into how some exported laphet thote had been tainted with toxic food dye? Did they say something “wrong” in their classes? What about the published rumors later (all denied) that they were with the CIA, that they had been consorting with dissident monks, that they had attended a skit for foreigners that poked fun at the regime?

“Who knows?” Karen says.

What she does know is that she and Jerry got a serious taste of the intimidation and fear imposed on Burmese journalists and photographers, some of whom secretly work for exile opposition media or for the BBC Burmese Service, Voice of America or Radio Free Asia.

“They take huge risks every day,” she says. “It’s hard to think about what they go through.”

Who can forget the reportage and images of monks leading the “Saffron Revolution” of 2007 and Burmese troops opening fire on them? All of it came from Burmese journalists using digital cameras, cell phones and the Internet. Many were rounded up later and given long prison terms.

Jacob Baynham, just out of the School of Journalism, headed for Myanmar after the uprising had been crushed. Years earlier, as a high school graduate, he had traveled there, seen the realities of oppression and decided to make journalism his calling.

“After the monks protested in September, I wanted to get there as soon as possible,” he says. “I really wanted to tell the stories of that place.”

Now, early in 2008, he was in central Myanmar posing as a backpacker who just wanted to see a river known for good fishing. What he was really after was a story about a secret jungle construction site where, rumor had it, the regime was ramping up some sort of nuclear installation.

A guide named Kyaw Kyaw had agreed to go along. The effusive man, who called himself Jo Jo, bragged to villagers along the way that Jacob was “an American! An American! First to the moon and now first to your village!”

After a day of hiking and hitching, the two found themselves in a remote village where Jacob reckons he was the first white man many of the children had seen. The villagers were friendly but nervous. They said they had heard explosions from just across the next mountain range and seen helicopters. The army had warned them never to go there. They advised the two hikers to go back.

Jacob and Kyaw Kyaw chose discretion over valor. The next morning, they returned to the town of Maymyo. There, as they were about to part ways, plainclothes policemen on motorbikes appeared, told them “get on,” whisked them off to a police station on the edge of town, sat them down and began peppering them with questions. They wanted Jacob’s passport … ”now!”

“That’s when I realized this was a bad situation,” Jacob says. “There were 11 of them, some with walkie-talkies. One of them was very aggressive and angry toward Kyaw Kyaw.“

The interrogators gave no indication they spoke English. They used Kyaw Kyaw as a translator to question Jacob. Who was he? Why was he in Myanmar? What did he study in school? Why did he want to go where he had gone? On and on. Jacob stuck to the backpacker story.

A sign on the otherwise bare wall read “All respect, all suspect.” You don’t get to call an attorney in Myanmar.

“I was trying to stay focused,” Jacob says. “But the situation was escalating.”

The interrogators wanted to see the pictures in his digital camera. The photos of the hike and village were harmless enough. But then there were shots of teak logs being trucked to Yangon, of the Moustache Brothers troupe that makes fun of the regime for foreigners in Mandalay, of the work and tattoos of dissident artists and rappers — all indicating a curious photojournalist at work.

“They knew they had something there,” Jacob says. “That’s when I started panicking. My heart started pounding. I’d never felt that kind of panic before. … There was nothing I could do.”

Jacob was tempted to hit the delete button as the police took him to a computer shop to make copies of the photos. But he knew that would only make things worse. The last thing he wanted was for them to start searching for more incriminating evidence. For in his backpack were two notebooks with the names and numbers of the dissidents he had interviewed in Yangon.

“I was distraught and worried and feeling foolish that I hadn’t been safer,” he says. “I should have hidden those pictures and encoded that notebook.”

Kyaw Kyaw knew the owner of the computer shop. Quietly, Jacob told his guide “I need some of those photos to disappear.” Kyaw Kyaw said he would see what he could do. The owner was already copying the photos from Jacob’s card to a computer. The owner told the police he would make them a CD.

Then, as suddenly as the frightening episode had begun, it was over. The police returned Jacob’s passport and bundled him into a truck bound for nearby Mandalay.

“Thank you very much,” the senior policeman told him. “Have a wonderful stay in our country.” Kyaw Kyaw came to the truck window and shook Jacob’s hand.“Don’t worry about the photos,” he whispered. “I have taken care of them.”

As the truck pulled away, Jacob glanced in the rear-view mirror. There was Kyaw Kyaw in the grip of the most fearsome interrogator.

Jacob talked with Kyaw Kyaw on the telephone a couple of days later. The guide said he was all right but needed money.

“I don’t know what happened to him after that,” Jacob says.

From Mandalay, Jacob went to Yangon but sensed he was being followed everywhere.“I’ve never felt so paranoid in my life,” he says.

Then he went to see one of his artist friends. Awaiting him there was a man who introduced himself as being from the tourism ministry.

“You shouldn’t have hired that guide,” the man said.

The paranoia spiked. How did this man know about Kyaw Kyaw? And how did he know where to find Jacob? And when?

A few days later, Jacob flew to Bangkok.

Now, three years later, he wants to go back to Myanmar someday.

“What happened to me didn’t put me off the country,” he says. “It just made me realize how important it is to be smart about doing journalism there.”

In the meantime, he is asking me to do him a favor: “If you get to Maymyo, can you see if Kyaw Kyaw is still there?”