Some of you might know that Myanmar has had a turbulent history. Lots of events keep shaking up its political and religious landscape. While we know vaguely of this, we wanted to brush up more on Burma’s history before entering the country. Hence we got together a few books and I ‘procured’ a few movies about Myanmar. During times of rest such as being on a bus or train, we’d watch some of the movies. Some were historically informative, such as “The Lady” and “Beyond Rangoon“. Others showed a bit of contemporary culture, like the “Top Gear Burma Special“, and “Anthony Bourdain in Myanmar”. Still others were purely entertainment, such as “Rambo: IV” (not kidding you, a line from his movie, “Live for nothing, or die for something!” while fighting for the Kachin rebels in north Myanmar is said to have been adopted by the rebels as a warcry!).
After watching all movies though, one that I put off watching was one called “Burma VJ: Reporting from a closed country”. It seemed more dry, and I wasn’t too keen on it initially. As luck would have it, I fell sick in Bagan and decided to stay in one day. The only Burma related movie left was this one. So I decided to give it a try (you can watch it online here). Just before I started it, Jodee walked in as well, having stubbed her toe on one of the fancy e-Bikes.

Burma VJ, it turned out, was quite an eye-opening movie. It was made by a group of amateur reporters in Rangoon (the name of Yangon at that time) who called themselves the Democratic Voice of Burma (D.V.B.). It told their story, of how they walked around with hidden video cameras during the years of Burma’s oppressive military regime, using their local networks to know when an event was happening, and positioning people there, cameras hidden in bags, and under shoulders to shoot what was happening. A couple of them got caught and jailed. One vanished after being arrested. The military definitely did not want pics getting out. These folks would then smuggle the footage, either through trusted couriers or the Internet, to the outside world, so that the rest of the world could see what was truly happening in Burma. Hence when the Military kept telling the world that everything was peaceful, they would sneak footage of the student massacre, the monk killings, and the various protests. Watching the movie, I recognized some of their footage from News Programmes I had seen much before. I realized that BBC, CNN and other major networks used DVB’s footage to show their news stories. Essentially, this band of heroes had risked their lives to bring Burma’s plight out to the world. The movie ended with the reporters being mostly found out and having to go into hiding. It looked bleak for them.

The next day, after watching the sunrise from one of Bagan’s temples, Jodee and I decided to try out a new cafe to get some coffee, even though we had another favorite place. The coffee at the new place wasn’t anything of note. We were about to leave, when I decided to eat something and we stayed back. Then, a Burmese gentleman approached us and asked us how we found the food and internet, and explained to us that he was a consultant hired by business to make their internet and television presence better. He told us a little about how he used to be a Mariner in the US before he left to go about his business.

A few minutes later, coming back from the bathroom and wanting to connect more with him, I walked over to where he was taking pictures with a couple people and started a conversation. He mentioned how he was taking pictures for advertising on TV. Then I asked:
“Are these your assistants?”
“No, they’re from DVB.”
“!!! You mean, the Democratic Voice of Burma?”
“Yes yes. They also help with marketing sometimes to earn money.”
I was stunned. What were the chances?! If we had run into them any day before that day, we wouldn’t have known who they were. Any other cafe, any other time, and we wouldn’t have run into them.

The 2 reporters, upon hearing that we were talking about them, came over and introduced themselves. Only one spoke a bit of english. The other stood silent. We asked her when she joined, and she told us in August 2007. She was there filming the protest of the monks, contributing to the Movie, and being in the front ranks! Our jaws were on the floor.

On their side, they were happy that we, 2 foreigners, knew them. The next thing they did was whip out their video camera and request from us a video testimonial about DVB! These were people who had risked their lives to expose a military regime, and they were asking for our testimonial of them! We were dumbstruck. But the camera was rolling already. We said a few words of how in awe we were of their heroism and grateful for the work they had done so we could be informed.

The reporter then gave us her card. Jodee was quick to take out her camera, and we got a pic with the reporter who was part of DVB.!

It’s quite a serendipitious place, Myanmar.