A soldier outside his encampment in eastern BurmaClick here to view more of Nic Dunlop's images from Burma and to hear him discussing his work
In 1995, I travelled to Burma to photograph its most famous daughter: Aung San Suu Kyi. Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), had won the elections five years before but the country’s military dictatorship had refused to give up power. Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest, had been awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1991 and was already an icon. Over the previous few years, I had met western activists who were convinced that, with the right pressure, the regime would collapse and she would take up her rightful position as leader. I hoped to photograph her one day. Then in July 1995 she was freed from house arrest for the first time and I got my chance. It was my first visit to Burma. On my arrival in the capital, Rangoon, I had expected coils of razor wire and soldiers on every corner. Instead, I found a picture-postcard image of a reclusive country steeped in tradition. There were gleaming pagodas, monks on alms rounds and crumbling colonial buildings. People went about their daily lives. The brutal army I’d heard about was conspicuous by its absence. Burma’s rulers were trying to clean up its image, opening to the outside world after years of self-imposed isolation. Foreign investment was encouraged and, with Suu Kyi’s release, some outsiders thought that the regime might be softening. Most photographs of Suu Kyi showed a glamorous woman, smiling despite the years of isolation. I wanted to de-glamorise her; to show that her courage had come at a cost. I took Alberto Korda’s famous image of Che Guevara as a starting point. I wanted to capture something of Suu Kyi’s iconic status—but complicated by psychological reality. I knew exactly how I would photograph her. I sketched the outline of the image in notebooks months before our meeting, experimenting with ideas because I knew that, when the time came, I would only have a few minutes. She had already written about how tired she was of posing for photographers. With a friend who had come to interview her, I arrived at Suu Kyi’s home on a gloomy day during the rainy season. At the behest of military intelligence we had to sign a visitors’ book at the gate. Inside, her home it was dark and spartan. Photographs of her famous father hung on mildewed walls. When Aung San Suu Kyi swept into the room, I was surprised at how small she was. She seemed stiff and formal. It was only after talking with my friend that she began to relax. She told us how the soldiers never acted on their own initiative; we laughed at the crude propaganda billboards that had been erected by the regime. Finally I asked if she would pose. I stood her at the entrance of the house with the door open. I wanted the photograph to be visible from afar, and the darkness of the interior provided a backdrop. I asked her to fold her arms, so she looked a little impatient—that she, and the people of Burma, had been kept waiting for what was rightfully theirs. To reinforce that idea, I got her to look sideways, as if she had been interrupted from more important concerns. In Korda’s photograph, Guevara looks into a distant revolutionary future, above and beyond the viewer. I wanted Suu Kyi to look straight into the lens for an intimacy that bordered on accusation. I didn’t ask her to smile. To my knowledge, this photo (below) has been published just six times. Yet it has been reproduced on posters and T-shirts around the world. It is strange to see the image being brandished at marches from New Delhi to Washington DC.
From the Prospect archive: August 2002—Nic Dunlop hunts Pol Pot’s chief executioner
In 1995, I travelled to Burma to photograph its most famous daughter: Aung San Suu Kyi. Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), had won the elections five years before but the country’s military dictatorship had refused to give up power. Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest, had been awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1991 and was already an icon. Over the previous few years, I had met western activists who were convinced that, with the right pressure, the regime would collapse and she would take up her rightful position as leader. I hoped to photograph her one day. Then in July 1995 she was freed from house arrest for the first time and I got my chance. It was my first visit to Burma. On my arrival in the capital, Rangoon, I had expected coils of razor wire and soldiers on every corner. Instead, I found a picture-postcard image of a reclusive country steeped in tradition. There were gleaming pagodas, monks on alms rounds and crumbling colonial buildings. People went about their daily lives. The brutal army I’d heard about was conspicuous by its absence. Burma’s rulers were trying to clean up its image, opening to the outside world after years of self-imposed isolation. Foreign investment was encouraged and, with Suu Kyi’s release, some outsiders thought that the regime might be softening. Most photographs of Suu Kyi showed a glamorous woman, smiling despite the years of isolation. I wanted to de-glamorise her; to show that her courage had come at a cost. I took Alberto Korda’s famous image of Che Guevara as a starting point. I wanted to capture something of Suu Kyi’s iconic status—but complicated by psychological reality. I knew exactly how I would photograph her. I sketched the outline of the image in notebooks months before our meeting, experimenting with ideas because I knew that, when the time came, I would only have a few minutes. She had already written about how tired she was of posing for photographers. With a friend who had come to interview her, I arrived at Suu Kyi’s home on a gloomy day during the rainy season. At the behest of military intelligence we had to sign a visitors’ book at the gate. Inside, her home it was dark and spartan. Photographs of her famous father hung on mildewed walls. When Aung San Suu Kyi swept into the room, I was surprised at how small she was. She seemed stiff and formal. It was only after talking with my friend that she began to relax. She told us how the soldiers never acted on their own initiative; we laughed at the crude propaganda billboards that had been erected by the regime. Finally I asked if she would pose. I stood her at the entrance of the house with the door open. I wanted the photograph to be visible from afar, and the darkness of the interior provided a backdrop. I asked her to fold her arms, so she looked a little impatient—that she, and the people of Burma, had been kept waiting for what was rightfully theirs. To reinforce that idea, I got her to look sideways, as if she had been interrupted from more important concerns. In Korda’s photograph, Guevara looks into a distant revolutionary future, above and beyond the viewer. I wanted Suu Kyi to look straight into the lens for an intimacy that bordered on accusation. I didn’t ask her to smile. To my knowledge, this photo (below) has been published just six times. Yet it has been reproduced on posters and T-shirts around the world. It is strange to see the image being brandished at marches from New Delhi to Washington DC.
Aung San Suu Kyi: she has now spent 14 years under house arrest
***** On 7th November, Burma will hold elections for the first time in 20 years. Although the military has allowed new parties to form, restrictive laws and registration fees have limited the campaigning. Aung San Suu Kyi—who is under house arrest again, and has been for much of the past two decades—is banned from standing and her party is boycotting the vote. Critics say the elections are a sham and that the army will not give up the control it has held for nearly half a century. That same army was founded by Aung San Suu Kyi’s father. General Aung San helped pave the way for Burma’s independence from Britain but was assassinated six months before the country became independent in January 1948. Burma’s fledgling democracy only lasted until 1962, when General Ne Win overthrew the government in a coup. Though only president for seven years from 1974, Ne Win was in control of the country for the next 26 years as chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme party. His disastrous economic policies including the confiscation of most private property isolated Burma from the world. An intelligence network was set up and spies permeated all levels of society. Over the years, the army violently suppressed any protests against the regime. But by 1988, when Ne Win finally stepped down, the situation reached crisis point. General unrest and food shortages sparked nationwide demonstrations in August calling for democratic government. The army responded by opening fire on the protesters, killing up to 3,000 people. Aung San Suu Kyi, who had just returned to Burma after years of studying and living abroad, became the focus of the protest movement. She helped found the NLD and was made general secretary. In 1989, she was put under house arrest. When the NLD clinched an overwhelming victory in the 1990 elections, the junta ignored the results. Her supporters were harassed, jailed and tortured. And the situation is much the same today. After the end of the cold war, Burma became a cause célèbre in the west. It was viewed as a simple morality play in which an imprisoned, charismatic leader struggled against a wicked regime: the South Africa of the 1990s. Yet despite international pressure, the generals have held on to power. Suu Kyi has spent 14 of the past 20 years under house arrest, separated from her British husband Michael Aris, who died in 1999, and her two sons. The presence of spies doesn’t explain how a regime so reviled could have such a hold on its population for so long. The reality is a mix of coercion and collusion. In Burma’s conservative culture, opinions and expressions of anger have always tended to be hidden. And many people have no option but to support the regime to survive. Expressions of dissent are mostly oblique. For example, a magazine editor I know was thrilled to get clearance for an advert for the film V for Vendetta, despite the line: “People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.” Small acts of resistance like these keep people sane. Shortly after she was released from house arrest in 1995, Suu Kyi said it would be a shame if Burma were to slip from the world’s headlines again. But inevitably it did. ***** Back in 1995, I also planned to photograph the visible signs of oppression. But there was nothing to see. The people I met were friendly yet holding back, unsure whether it was safe to talk, fearful of spies. References to politics were oblique and fleeting, sometimes accompanied by a wink. Gradually, as if my eyes were becoming accustomed to darkness, I began to perceive the regime’s impact. The dictatorship was so deeply entrenched that there was no need for soldiers on the streets. It left me with a quandary: how do you photograph a paranoid conversation on a Rangoon street corner? I was there shortly before “Visit Myanmar Year” (the junta changed the country’s name in 1989 but the British government, among others, does not recognise this). This drive for international tourism was meant to bring in hard currency and legitimacy. An estimated 1m people were dragooned into improving the country’s depleted infrastructure. But such was the scale of the forced labour that there was little need to send troops to supervise. In their absence, there was nothing to indicate that workers were not paid labourers or villagers working in their fields. When signs of the regime did appear they were momentary: a glimpse of handcuffs in a man’s back pocket, a military policeman taking his own photographs of a crowd outside Suu Kyi’s home. On one occasion, I was walking down a quiet street in Rangoon when I saw uniformed men on the pavement ahead. Three policemen and an intelligence officer were taking a man away in handcuffs. I quickly took a light reading and set my camera, then flagged down a taxi heading in the same direction. Just before we sped past the group, I wound down the window and snapped a photograph. For a split second, the regime revealed itself. A curtain had been drawn back and, just as swiftly, closed again. The man in handcuffs could have been an activist—or a thief. The regime makes no distinction between someone expressing an opinion and a common criminal: all are enemies of the state. Since that first visit I have returned to Burma many times. But I have become increasingly frustrated by what is missing from my photographs. It is impossible to achieve a degree of intimacy with people in the country without putting them in danger. It has also become harder to keep to the view that the political situation is a straightforward duel between Suu Kyi and the generals. If not actually incorrect, this is a simplistic analysis, explaining little about a country which has been embroiled in a complex civil war that goes back to the decades of British occupation. Burma is one of the most diverse societies in the world, containing more than 135 distinct ethnic groups. The largest group are the Burmans, who make up around two thirds of the country’s population of 50m. They are mostly Buddhist and have traditionally lived in the plains. The other large groups are the Mon, Chin, Shan, Kachin and Karen, who live in mountainous areas, and some of whom are Christian. The suspicion between lowlanders and the highlanders—and between Christians and Buddhists—runs deep. During the second world war, many of the minority groups sided with the British. The Burmans, led by Aung San, joined the Japanese side, before switching allegiance to the allies in 1945. Aung San conducted successful negotiations with many ethnic groups, but after the country became independent, guarantees of minority rights were not respected. The backlash was violent, and conflicts started which continue to this day. The world’s longest ongoing civil war is, in effect, going on in Burma. Most ethnic groups want more autonomy rather than independence, but the threat of the break-up of Burma is a key theme in the regime’s propaganda. Keeping the country together, the junta claims, justifies its continuing hold on power, even though in doing so it has created 1m refugees. Yet Aung San Suu Kyi has little popularity in these areas. I visited various insurgent groups on the Thai border, including the Shan state army in its jungle HQ. Some refugees I met had not even heard of her; some were openly suspicious. Others remembered that her father, Aung San, founded the very army they have spent decades fighting. Aung San did not live to see the modern state of Burma. But many of his contemporaries—trained by the Japanese during the war—went on to fight in the conflicts that erupted soon after. Several key members of the NLD were once senior military men who took part in these brutal counter-insurgency campaigns. Many of the insurgents are animist, Christian and Muslim. Like her father, Suu Kyi is a Buddhist and a Burman—the identity the regime would impose on the whole country. In 2006, I talked my way into an army encampment in the northeast. This was my first chance to photograph soldiers; it was against the law. It was a lonely spot which, several years earlier, had been attacked by ethnic Shan rebels and burned to the ground. The portly commander was clearly bored and welcomed the novelty of having a foreign visitor. He and his lieutenant treated me to rice wine and deep-fried bat before taking me on a tour of the camp. But he warned me: I could only take photos of the men if they were not in uniform. He held his fists together as if cuffed, telling me that if they (military intelligence) identified the unit, he would go to prison. It wasn’t hard to follow his instructions—most of his men wore sarongs and T-shirts. They looked more like a ragtag militia than members of a totalitarian force. The commander and his lieutenant were ethnic Burman; the rest were Shan, Karen and Mon. They were farmers’ sons, and reminded me of the Khmer Rouge rank and file I had met in Cambodia. Until 2007, this was the closest I had come to the military. Then the door opened of its own accord. That year, the regime invited members of the foreign media to attend an annual parade known as Armed Forces day. It marks the birthday of Burma’s army and is the most important date in the regime’s calendar. To my surprise, I was granted a visa. I found myself sitting in a car in a convoy looking at people who were forced to stop on the road to let us pass. Then I was among the generals. For years, I had known them only as the monsters of legend. Now there they were in their ordinariness, taking pictures of each other with digital cameras. The parade ground was vast. Beneath statues of old Burmese warrior kings, 15,000 troops marched like German stormtroopers, with polished boots and gleaming bayonets. The statues depicted Anawrahta, Bayint Naung and Alaungpaya, who are celebrated for uniting their kingdoms. In the minds of the generals, they represent a glorious time before Burma’s humiliation by the British, who in 1885 put an end to centuries of royal rule and marched the last king off to exile. The media were allocated a spot beside the generals. It was not ideal—potted plants got in the way and the soldiers were on the far side of the ground. I noticed a cluster of soldiers ahead of us who were clearly observers and nearer to the troops. I asked our minders if I could stand closer and to my surprise they agreed. They took me to the spot and I got my photographs of the mighty Burmese army. United, disciplined, tough and monolithic: this was how they wanted to be seen. And it was, ironically, how they were seen by western activists. If Burma’s story has too often been portrayed as a simple battle between the generals and Aung San Suu Kyi, then my portrait of her has bolstered that reading. But photography is an ambivalent medium. In my photograph, she can be seen as strong and principled, a leader comparable to Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King or Gandhi. But her strengths also reflect other characteristics: stubbornness, dogmatism, self-righteousness. As one journalist who has covered Burma for more than 25 years wrote: “She may be a saint, but she is not a shrewd politician.” Because of her time spent studying abroad, raising a family in England, and suffering a long imprisonment, Suu Kyi has had little direct experience of the reality of life in much of her country. She has remained steadfast and principled, but she has made little headway through her country’s deeper divisions. Photography is, in large part, about projection. We see what we want to see, irrespective of more complex realities. Not long after Armed Forces day, Burmese monks took to the streets and scenes of the army crushing their protests were broadcast around the world. Then there was the devastation of cyclone Nargis. And still the military remains in control. Now, looking back over my pictures of Burma, I find myself turning to the individual portraits: taken from Rangoon to upper Burma, from refugees in camps to insurgents in the jungle. And if I look closely at any of them, I find as many ambiguities as I do in the portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi.From the Prospect archive: August 2002—Nic Dunlop hunts Pol Pot’s chief executioner
