Shortly after Cyclone Nargis devastated Burma, Evan Williams set his sights on documenting the aftermath in a documentary film.
But the former south-east Asia correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation realized it was easier said than done. The ruling military junta banned foreign journalists and even local film crews were banned from the Irrawaddy Delta which bore the brunt of a storm that killed 140,000 and left 2.4 million displaced or badly affected.
Enter the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), the Oslo-based group that maintains an underground network of video journalists who smuggle footage to the outside world which DVB broadcasts back into the country through its radio and TV news service.
“It is a remarkable organization,” Williams says. “Their cameramen and reporters risk very long jail terms – anywhere between 18 and 30 years – if they are caught. But there’s this Burmese thing: they won’t let it stop. Every time I go back there’s a new generation of kids who are saying, ‘This is wrong, we want democracy, we’re going to do something about it.’ It’s incredibly humbling and inspiring.”
The DVB, a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy, provided most of the footage broadcast by international media of the 2007 ’saffron revolution’ protests as detailed in the award-winning documentary, Burma VJ.
“The saffron revolution confirmed that Burma is unusual in that there is no country in the world where the contrast is more sharply drawn between a dark and repressive regime and a people that so clearly aspires to peace and reconciliation,” said Carl Gershman, president of the NED, speaking at the U.S. House of Representatives on the occasion of the 64th birthday of Daw Aung Sang Suu Kyi:
This was clear during the saffron revolution when monks and common citizens marched peacefully through the streets in massive numbers chanting slogans having to do with reconciliation, dialogue, freedom from fear and distress, and the belief that all beings of the universe have dignity and should enjoy freedom, only to be shot down by the agents of a lawless and heartless government.
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