Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

Last word on Burma - the full story

My search for truth in Burma began in a sleepy embassy in Vientiane, Laos, where I sat sweating on a patent leather sofa in a crumpled silk shirt and tie, pulling phony business cards from my wallet and lying through my teeth. It was two months after the monk-led anti-government uprisings of last September, and I had already been rejected a tourist visa twice in Hong Kong and Bangkok. I decided to hit the diplomatic backwaters with a different tack.

So one night in Vientiane I printed a couple dozen business cards, which peddled me as the owner of a Colorado-based jewelry business that has never existed. I designed my own executive stationary and drafted a formal letter of intent. In three days, I had the visa; stamped, sealed and shining like a coin from the pages of my passport.

I wanted to answer one question in Burma: how has a group of xenophobic generals survived 46 years of global condemnation, multiple popular uprisings and the persistent bloodletting of a handful of ethnic armies?

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"Better than Burma"

Yesterday I visited the rubbish dump on the edge of Mae Sot, a Thai town across the river from Burma. The dump itself was a predictable reflection of the consumption of a medium-sized Thai city. Plastic bags, decrepit toys, batteries, tin cans and the occasional ruined soccer ball stretched out for hundreds of meters.

But what's trash to some is the livelihood of others. Atop the garbage pile, more than 300 illegal Burmese immigrants have built small huts and call the dump home. They spend their days combing through the rubbish for a meager harvest - plastic and glass bottles and aluminum cans that they can cash in for petty change. Some have lived here for nine years.

"It's better than Burma," one mother told me as flies swarmed around her face. "We don't have work in Burma. Here we earn forty to sixty baht a day ($1.30-$2). There are many problems."

A Dangerous Palette for Burma's Artists

It's only mid-morning, and sitting in his simple studio in the shadow of some of Rangoon’s wealthiest mansions, Thein Soe is already exhausted.

Soe, not his real name, is bone-thin at 61, with smoke-yellowed hair, and a face like the Scream. An artist for most of his life, Soe was 16 when General Ne Win took power in Burma in a military coup. He’s since weathered the military junta’s 46 year-rule on his country, watching it crush pro-democracy demonstrations, turn one of the wealthiest Southeast Asian economies upside down and quash all freedom of expression.

He may be tired, but Soe is not a beaten man. From the studio in his quiet home, he still tries to capture the truths of his country in his paintings, installations and performance art. It’s not always a truth that’s savored by the government.

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Voices from Burma

“In your country, you work two days and you have food for a week,” says Maung Lwin, a welder taking a break for tea after lunch. “Here, you work for one day and you eat for one day.” Lwin supports his family on an average daily wage of $2.30, the same salary the government pays a specialized doctor. Money is so tight that even sitting down for a 15 cent cup of tea takes careful consideration.

“You are human, I am also human,” he tells me. “But my luck is not the same as your luck.”

None of it makes any sense. Blessed with wealthy deposits of gemstones, teak forests, agricultural land, natural gas and oil, Burma has the potential to be the wealthiest nation in Southeast Asia. ...

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