39, photojournalist
ETHNICITY: Karen
BIRTHPLACE: Pa’an, Karen State, Burma
INTERVIEWED IN: Buffalo, New York, USA
We met Law in his apartment in Buffalo, New York, where he served us home-cooked Burmese food and showed us his small but growing library of books in Burmese and English. Dressed in a longyi, Law sat on the couch and began telling his life story. His voice raised in excitement as he passionately recounted his journey to becoming a photojournalist. Law’s determination to document the lives of everyday people in Burma was ignited when he shot his first roll of film during the ’88 uprising.11 During the 2007 Saffron Revolution, Law took photos of the SPDC’s brutal crackdown on protesters. Law described how his ongoing commitment to capturing and sharing these images put his life in danger and forced him to leave Burma.
In 2008, my family had our first Christmas together in twenty years. I hadn’t seen my brother for twenty years, and my mom for almost six years. I arrived in the U.S. in March 2008, with only an IOM packet of travel documents and my camera, the one I used in the 2007 uprising.22
My niece came to meet me at the airport too, but she didn’t know who I was. So my mom and my brother’s wife told her, “This is your uncle.” She was scared of me, but it was a wonderful time. It’s so very difficult to explain that kind of moment.
It’s not only my family that’s been separated—it happens to thousands of families from Burma. So that’s why I made a decision when I graduated university. I wanted to do something meaningful and wonderful for my people, and also for my country. At the time, I was crazy about photography. So I made a firm decision: I will be a photojournalist. So many of my friends, they mocked me. It’s a crazy thing, you know? Among our Karen people, there are no photojournalists. How could I compete? The people in the city, in Rangoon, they have thousands of good photographers there. In the villages we don’t have enough training. Especially if you dream of working with an international news agency like AFP or AP33—it’s 100 percent insane, you know?
It’s almost impossible to work as a wire agency photographer in Burma. After 1962, the government did not allow the wire agencies to hire staff photographers in Burma. It’s like an iron curtain in Burma; they want to block the world from seeing the country. I believe the government tries their best to stop any young photographers from rising in Burma. But for me, I decided, one day I will become a photojournalist. I didn’t become a photojournalist because I was hard-working, I became a photojournalist because my heart was burning for it.
THE CAMERA STAYED IN MY HEART
I was born in 1971, in Pa’an, the capital city of Karen state. But I mostly grew up in a very simple village. My mother divorced my dad when I was seventeen, and she had to raise her sons without enough income, even though she was working as a nurse at the same time she was raising us. She was a nurse for the government in Burma, and she earned less than ten dollars a month. She had to move around several villages in Karen state, so I grew up in a village without electricity, and then I finished my high school study in Pa’an. Pa’an is a small, beautiful city under the Zwegabin Hill.44 There’s a college, and also a high school. We have a wonderful Karen community there.
I first knew about photography because my dad is a freelance photographer for a newspaper in Burma. When I was a kid, I was so proud when he raised his camera before the people—I felt like he was my hero. I loved him so much. But in 1997, he divorced my mom and remarried. It made me so sad. I still have bitter memories about that, but maybe it was a good experience for me. Since my mom went to different villages for work, I had to stay with several families. Some of them were my friends and some were my mom’s friends. I think only a broken family can understand this kind of situation. I love my dad, but I feel like we have different attitudes. He wasn’t crazy about photography like I am. But the camera stayed in my heart.
I started to read magazines in English when I was young. Even though I wasn’t good at English, I loved to read. I read National Geographic, some old Life magazines, and also Time and Newsweek. I would also compare the images with the photography in Burma. In Burma, photographers like my dad have to take photos of everything that’s fine—beautiful smiles, wonderful landscapes, wonderful pagodas, people wearing traditional costumes in a ceremony. You see it in the newspapers, the magazines, and local media. But the people are different behind all that. As a villager, as a country boy, I know the people’s heartbeat. I know they are suffering and I know what the reality is.
That’s why even though I didn’t have good instruction, I knew how I should take photographs, like the kinds of photographs in National Geographic and Time magazine. The books and magazines were like my teachers. I also loved to watch movies, because I could learn English from reading the subtitles. But I didn’t have a good education. Even when I graduated school in 1988, I had to wait three years to start university because all the universities were closed.55 That made me see things differently. Actually, I shot my first images in the 1988 uprising.
MY ANONYMOUS HEROES
On August 8, 1988—8-8-88—I was in Rangoon. I had gone there in January and stayed eight months, because I wanted to see a very famous evangelist who was in Burma at the time. I was staying with a relative. Even though I went to Rangoon initially because I wanted to see the evangelist and to see what Rangoon was like, I’d also heard rumors that something was going to happen on 8-8-88. I had actually missed seeing the evangelist because when I arrived to Rangoon, he had already left and traveled to the U.S.—but I was there for 8-8-88. I saw the uprising.
On 8-8-88, I didn’t march with the people who were protesting, but I was very excited and energized when I saw what they were doing. Thousands of people were shouting slogans against the government. It was my first experience ever seeing people dare to go against the government, to go against the Burma Socialist Programme Party—BSPP.66
People were just marching through the streets peacefully and shouting, but then the soldiers blocked the streets and started shooting. I saw from very far away what was happening. First I heard the shooting. I heard hundreds of shots being fired… Doo doo doo doo doo doo! And then I saw the military shooting and the people running. People were running for their lives. It is very difficult to run with rubber sandals, so thousands of sandals were left behind in the streets as the people ran away. I also had to run away, but I would have taken a picture of those thousands of sandals in the street if I could have.
At that time, all of the buses stopped running so I had to walk back from downtown Rangoon to where my relative lived. It was quite far, maybe seven or eight miles. I didn’t see anyone die when I was running away, but I heard that many people were killed. I felt very bad.
People are used to seeing photos of some ruler, some leading figure. But I admire the anonymous heroes like the ones who were protesting that day. The anonymous heroes who are very dedicated, who are very brave—who give their own precious lives for the people. I always feel that they are my heroes. They make me feel humble.
WE WANTED JUSTICE
After that first crackdown in Rangoon, I went back to Pa’an. When I returned, everyone knew about what had happened. They had been following what the BBC and Voice of America were saying on the radio about the events in Rangoon. I told my close friends in high school all about what I had witnessed firsthand. We decided we had to take action with the university students against the government.
We were a group of young friends and also some university students. We had a meeting with some high school students and we decided to spark another uprising in Pa’an. The thing was, we knew all of the people were waiting to see who would ignite it, who would light the dynamite of protests again. So that’s why we dared to do it, to start a protest. We knew the situation, how the people really felt. All of the people wanted to go against the Burma Socialist Programme Party, and it was very easy to spark a protest, especially with the high school students. It was very simple.
The young people wanted to see change. We wanted justice and peace in the country. Now I realize that back then we didn’t really know much about politics, but we sincerely wanted to change the political system in our country for the benefit of our community, for the benefit of our people.
I personally wanted to spark another uprising in Pa’an because as a teenager, I knew that people in our country were suffering from poverty and injustice. I knew we needed change. I didn’t want to see more bloodshed.
I’ve seen many horrors in my life—I saw persecution when I was young. When I was in the village, just twelve years old, the government soldiers shot a villager. They arrested him and loaded him on a truck to take him to do forced labor. And then he ran, and they shot him. I just heard the gun shot, but then I watched his last moments. I could see his last breath before me, beside his relative. It made me very sad—I then understood how our situation really was.
Around that time, from 1984 to 1986, the Burmese military and the Burma Socialist Programme Party had big, big operations into the KNU stronghold.77 The BSPP said that the KNU was their enemy. Thousands of Burmese government soldiers in hundreds of military trucks would pass through our village. Usually they came through at nighttime. They would pass through our village around midnight especially, but sometimes they came during the day. We knew that they would go and fight. They would go and kill our own people or do miserable things to them. Even as a kid, you know these things because you’re there, and you hear stories from the survivors.
I was around twelve or thirteen at the time of the big military operations. I remember the people would just run away from the battlefields in the nearby villages and say that the Burmese government soldiers had been exchanging fire with the KNLA and that hundreds of villagers had died. They would tell us that their people were treated very inhumanely and killed by the Burmese soldiers. When the people ran away from the battlefield, they told us about how their people died from forced labor during the military operations. The Burmese used the villagers as human shields; the villagers were forced to stay in between the two groups that were fighting. They were just there between them, you know, without arms. They were also forced to clear the mines. Choppers would pass over our village, taking away the wounded Burmese soldiers from the battlefield.
It wasn’t like what you see in a movie. Real fighting is miserable. In movies there is a main actor, a protagonist, but in real fighting, everyone is equal—everyone is in a dangerous and miserable situation. In the movies, there is a script. But in real war, there is no script.
WE WERE OVER THE MOON
So it was a funny experience, planning the uprising in Pa’an. Before we started the spark, we informed some senior people, like medical doctors and university students. We told them that we, the high school students, were planning to do something, and we asked them to please lead us. We said, “We need your instruction, your guidelines on how to do it.” But they didn’t dare do it. We felt a little upset, but we decided to do it anyway.
We planned the Pa’an uprising for about three days. My friends and I were very energetic. All of the students and people were waiting to see who would lead. If you dared, you could be a leader. It was very easy, very simple. The high school students gathered in Pa’an during the last week of August to protest. Then we ignited this “dynamite,” and it happened—we just gathered and marched. But the funny thing is that once the uprising started, thousands of people joined, and then the cowardly people who didn’t dare join us at first took the leadership roles. I thought, Oh! This is politics! It was my first experience like that. When they took the leading roles, I prayed for them.
There were thousands of people there at the protests. Everyone had sunburns even if they walked under their umbrellas, but we didn’t care. We were over the moon; our spirits were very high.
We were wearing armbands and ties on our head, and we were carrying flags with a fighting peacock on them. The fighting peacock is a symbol of freedom in Burma and is used by the NLD.88 It was so hot and crowded, and everyone was chanting. It was very loud, thousands and thousands of people were chanting, saying we wanted change, we wanted democracy. It was like thunder.
During the protests, I took on the simple role of photographer.
At the time, my dad was not in Pa’an, but he had left a camera in the house there. This was the first time I rebelled against him. I knew that my dad locked his camera in a box, and I just broke the box and took the camera out. It surprised me that I dared to take it, because I was so afraid of my father. I usually didn’t dare to even look at him in the eye. I still remember, it was a Yashica MG-1 camera. But I didn’t know how to use it, so I ran to see my dad’s close friend and I asked him to teach me. He explained to me about the viewfinder and showed me, “You need to focus and then just hold the film like this.” So I learned within five minutes.
The next day, I rushed to the scene of the uprising. I just started shooting images. Even now, I can never forget that day. My first roll of film. I was holding the camera with one hand, and shouting and raising my fist with the other hand. It was an amazing moment to me. I was among the people!
I went to the photo lab and said, “Please develop this for me.” It was the most excited I’d ever been in my life. The man at the lab knew that I didn’t even know how to hold the camera before, but now I had shot this film of a historical movement in our country.
“Okay,” he said, “don’t worry.”
It was like being a new father, waiting for the first-born child, staying in the delivery room. I was very excited. I was just walking around the room, thinking, Wow. What will my pictures be like? It was a very exciting moment. After a little while, he showed me the negatives. I checked them and thought, Oh, that’s not too bad—it made me excited. Even now, I’m always excited for my picture results. I never changed in that way. I did the same thing later, taking pictures during the Saffron Revolution in 2007. I was so excited then, and it is the same now. Whenever I hold the camera, I forget everything.
We marched for around ten days in Pa’an. That was my first experience in politics. I didn’t know about politics, I simply knew we needed change. I wanted to see our ordinary people have a better life. Maybe you can label this as politics. For me, no, it’s just simple—we need change. And then we need to be dedicated and commit to it. That’s all.
But the sad thing was when the military took power on September 18, 1988.99 That November I went to visit one of my friends who was with the KNLA. I met with him in the Thailand–Burma border area because I wanted to see the conditions in that area.
My friend had joined the KNLA that year because he wanted to see change, and he wanted to fight back against the government. He and the other soldiers took arms because they thought they could reach some resolution in this way. My friend was just a regular soldier. I think at that time, almost all of the young Karen people had the same dream about joining the KNLA. The KNLA had a great influence over all of the young people. When we were young, all of the Karen people saw injustice, we saw civil war. We saw the KNLA fighting back against the government and we hated the government. Some decided to join the KNLA, but I think that no parent would want to see their son in the battlefield.
While I was at the border, I observed the situation. Only two things were in my mind while I was there. First, I thought about how that environment was not safe for me. Second, I thought about how I would love to go to Rangoon University. For those two simple reasons, I decided to go back home.
After two months staying with my friend and observing the situation there, I told him that I needed to go back to study in Rangoon. So I went back home. My mom had been worried that they would raid the house because I’d taken pictures of the uprising, so she had burned all my pictures. But it was like a seed, and then the seed became a small plant. That’s what first made me a photographer.
YOU MUST RESPECT YOUR CONSCIENCE
I loved that Yashica MG-1. I started taking pictures of church events, like weddings and ceremonies. So after those first years, I really knew how to use the camera. One day, my very respected Christian minister came to discuss cameras with me. He told me, “I have committed to go in a few days to the Naga Hills as a missionary. I will stay there for over five years, and I need to document it with a camera.”
Then I thought of something. I told him, “You take my camera. Yeah, you take my camera.”
“But why? Do you have an extra camera? How will you take photos?”
“No, you take it. God will provide for me.” He was surprised, but it made me feel wonderful. It was my only camera, but ten years later, I had three or four cameras. But I’ll never forget that, because you always have to give the best of what you have.
From 1991 to 1996, I was at Rangoon University, studying law. When I graduated in 1996, my friends were trying to become lawyers and judges. My father came and told me that it was also time for me to become a lawyer or a judge, but I refused and said I wanted to become a photojournalist. Angrily, he told me that I was selfish. But I just said to myself, No. I will do the thing I should do and also the thing I want to do. That’s why I chose to be a photojournalist. My dad didn’t speak to me for almost a year.
From 1996 to 1998, I worked as an apprentice for a camera crew. It’s a funny thing, you know, working without payment, but I did it for almost two years. Even though they used a TV camera, I could learn from them—how to do research for a story, how to chase the news, and how to do an interview. And then from 1998 to 2002, I worked for a rich Karen businessman as his personal photographer. The first payment for me was the equivalent of five dollars for one month. I never cared about the money, but as a human being you do need it. But my burning desire kept me alive; I was still dreaming that one day I’d become a staff photographer for a wire agency.
THE ONLY PLACE WHERE YOU CAN FIND TRUTH
I later did photo projects about daily life in Rangoon and the villagers living beside the Salween River. In 2001, I took my first trip outside Burma, to Thailand. That’s where I first used the Internet. In 2003, I started sending my images from inside Burma, by Internet. It was very difficult. Sometimes we had to wait an hour or more to send just one or to two pictures. I think the government has a machine that combs through everything and delays pictures from being sent outside of Burma. But the wonderful thing was that I had very good friends in Rangoon who are very skillful with the Internet and computers, so they helped me.
There are many kinds of photos that the government does not want other countries to see. The government does not like photos of people’s daily life, of the villages, etcetera. If they see that you are taking these kinds of photos, they will be angry. But I don’t want to just take pictures of very famous people, like political leaders and military generals—I want to focus on daily lives of the ordinary people. I want to focus on the people who are the victims of politics, the victims of the system. People like my family and others. But I have to be careful when taking the pictures.
If you want to know the situation of another country other than Burma, you can just pick up a daily newspaper. But in the daily newspaper in Burma, you just see the government’s picture of the country. You see development and advanced technologies—about their opening ceremony for a new bridge, or for a new hydropower project. Everything looks like it’s wonderful. The daily newspaper in Burma is full of propaganda; the only place where you can find 100 percent truth in the newspaper is in the obituaries.
When I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I heard that an organization was looking for a photojournalist from inside Burma to train. They approached me about the training and introduced me to a gentleman named Jack Picone. Jack is a journalist from Australia, and he was my trainer for five days in 2000 or 2001. He became my mentor, as well as a very good friend. Jack trained me in Jakarta, too, in the first World Press workshop in Jakarta, for Southeast Asian photographers in 2002.
Jack taught me photography and about journalism. He taught me to respect all my subjects because they each have their own dignity. So many photographers take the images of their subjects for themselves—they lack respect for them. As a photographer, you have to respect your conscience. That’s all. Jack taught me how to become a photographer with a wonderful heart. This lesson is the most wonderful thing he taught me.
From 2002 to 2003, I was hired to do some projects for groups in Thailand—some NGOs and magazines. For my security, I used different names. I was very proud of the work. I had one project where I covered the current life of people inside Burma and also in refugee camps in Thailand. And then in 2003, I was hired by AFP. In less than ten years, I’d achieved what I wanted to do.
But the most wonderful thing that happened to me in my life was when one day my dad came and met me in Rangoon, because he was living near the Thailand–Burma border. And he said, “Son, I’m very proud of you because I saw your pictures in the Bangkok Post.” It was the most amazing thing in my life. It was 2003, and I was living in Rangoon, working as a staff photographer for AFP. I was the first photojournalist for the Karen people. Maybe in America, in the UK, or in France, they will get thousands of photojournalists. But for me, among my people, I was the first one. Even if I don’t have great photography skills, I can show something.
WITH MY CAMERA, I CAN CARRY A MESSAGE FROM THE PEOPLE
In Burma, it’s very difficult to become an accredited journalist for the foreign press. You have to have a special license to be employed by a foreign agency. I had to wait over three years to be accredited. It was tougher for me because I am an ethnic Karen; the government doesn’t trust ethnic people, especially the Karen. There were only twenty-one journalists accredited as working for a foreign news agency when I got accredited. They knew us very well, and they can take action against you if you photograph something they don’t want you to.
The government in Burma hates journalists; it’s very difficult to get a passport in Burma if you are a journalist. But Burmese people love photographers and welcome me because they know that the picture will go to the outside world. They know that through my lens the people outside of Burma will see who we are and what our difficulties are. With my camera, I can carry a message from the people. So that’s why they love me. That’s all. It’s very simple.
When you are with the people, they will protect you. But with the government, you have to be very careful. We know we’re taking a risk. I knew what could happen if the government got me. But my passion kept me alive.
THE OLD WOUNDS ARE STILL BLEEDING
In 2007, they tried to arrest me two times, when I shot photos of the monk uprising, and also when they tried to arrest the activist Su Su Nway.1010 When they make arrests, they drag people like animals, so I shot photos of that. After, they tried to chase me. The government people were in plainclothes, but we knew. Everyone simply ran. Run, run, run. By then I didn’t dare sleep at my apartment, so I had to move around several times. They tried to raid my apartment, but I was already staying somewhere else.
As a photographer, you’re just crazy for it—you don’t care what’s happening. I know there are hundreds of people beside me, but I just take the picture. And then when my blood cools off, I think, “Oh, they might come and arrest me.”
During the marches, I thought two things. First, when I saw thousands of monks peacefully marching on the street in protest, I thought there would be big change. And also I thought that the army would never shoot these very reverent monks. But they did it. They killed monks.
And the second thing I thought: by 2007, the government thought that the people had already forgotten about the 1988 uprising. No, the old wounds are still bleeding. The 2007 uprising shocked the government. Four generations of students were united: 1962, 1974, 1988, and 2007.1111 They did it together.
I just ran, did my pictures, and gave them to my friends. They went to separate Internet cafés and sent them to the European Press-photo Agency (EPA). Maybe you saw the picture of a young monk—he’s shouting and holding his bowl upside down. It’s from the 2007 uprising. I took that picture.
I was at the same location as Kenji Nagai, the Japanese photographer. I tried to remind Nagai that the SPDC soldiers would shoot soon, because I could sense they would do something, but when I tried to approach him, I think he maybe thought that I was his rival or something. I just reminded him and two Western photographers. I just said, “They will shoot soon.” And they did. I ran away just before they shot him. When they started shooting, I just ran. And then, in the evening, I heard that Nagai had been killed.1212 And then I saw that, accidentally, I had taken his picture when he was taking a photo of the monks. So he was in my camera, just a few minutes before he died.
After Kenji Nagai was shot and killed, I was worried because I was like a living witness for the shooting. I think the Burmese government decided to kill him because he was a dear friend of the Burmese people. In Rangoon, very few men wear shorts, but Nagai was wearing shorts; it was easy to identify him and see that he was a foreigner.
I was also worried because I had such close connections to the opposition leaders. I thought that the Burmese military would catch me and try to do something to me. I thought the government might give me serious trouble. If I had been arrested, I bet they would have locked me up. U Win Tin, a journalist and one of our country’s heroes, was just released after nineteen years in prison. People like him are our heroes. One of my very close friends who is a journalist was arrested and is still being held in Insein Prison right now.
I knew the government was looking for me because just after I left, they raided my friend’s house where I had been hiding for a week. I only stayed in Rangoon for two days. Then I left and went to the border area. I stayed on the Burma side of the border, because I had a good relationship with some people there. So this time, when I was in trouble, they helped me out. It’s like a movie—but it’s not like Hollywood.
When I got to the border area, I received help from some friends. When I was there, a man I knew from before gave me a satellite phone. “You can call anytime you want.” He brought a TV from the city and he set it up for me with a satellite dish so I could see what was happening in Rangoon.
And then, for the first time in my life, I saw that CNN, the BBC, and Al Jazeera had all used my picture. This was the most wonderful thing in my life, I was so proud. I can’t compare my skills with many other photographers—I’m not a good photographer, but I can do something. In the 1988 uprising, mostly Westerners came and took photos inside Rangoon. In 2007, this was my time. Also, I saw that in Norway, some people were protesting Burma’s government because they were shooting and killing the monks. A few countries went to protest before the Burmese Embassy, and they were using the photo I took. I thought, Yeah, this is wonderful! That’s my picture! I was very proud of it.
I stayed inside Burma by the border for almost two months, and then my friends told me to leave the border and go immediately to Mae Sot—they said there was someone there who could help me. My friends paid money to take me over the border crossing. I was shedding tears in the car as I went toward the border. I asked myself so many questions. I thought maybe I was being a coward, running to another country. But the thing was, before I left for the border, monks came and they prayed for me. They told me very simply, “Law, please never feel sad. Please go to where you need to. You have done enough here, so please go forward. Please go to America because God will use you there.”
Soon after I arrived in Thailand, a gentleman called me and said his organization wanted to help. He asked, “Where are you now? Are you safe?” He said to me, “We will pick you up and take you to Bangkok.”
“Sir, I do not have a passport because I just ran from the border crossing,” I said to him.
“You don’t need a passport,” he told me.
“I deeply appreciate this,” I said. “I deeply thank you for your help to me.”
And then—I will never forget this until my last breath—he said to me: “We will never ignore the people who help us.”
It was wonderful. So maybe a week later, the U.N. processor came. Within a month, I got into the United States resettlement program. That was January 2008.
I ALWAYS SEE IT AS HALF FULL
On March 18, I had to leave Thailand. I reached America on March 19, 2008. It was my birthday. Before the plane landed at JFK airport, I was still thinking about how I spent those two months in a remote area in Burma, and then now, I could see the Statue of Liberty. It was a wonderful moment. But the very simple thing was that my mom wanted to see me. My mother had been resettled to Buffalo in 2005, with my youngest brother. It had been almost six years since the last time I saw her. Like many people in Karen State, my family was suspected of supporting the KNU. Because of this, my mother and brother had to flee to the Nu Po refugee camp. My other brother fled even earlier and was resettled in 2000.
I had to sleep one night in New York. It was like another planet. But the thing is, it wasn’t a big culture shock for me because I read the newspaper and magazines, and I watch TV. I thought, So now I’m in the land of opportunities.
When I was in Burma, I’d never been cold. But here I’ve been in the cold many times. In Buffalo, I worked in a communication product company for a month. After only one month there, the refugee agency came and said, “We need you.” So that’s why I went to work with them, and I’ve been there for almost nine months already. Working as an interpreter is a wonderful experience. I’ve been to schools, the hospital, the clinic, police stations—several places. I interpret for people from Burma: Karen, Burmese, Chin, and Arakanese. Also, I’m going to college now. I’m studying social sciences in Buffalo. Classes are wonderful, but I hate math. It’s awful for me and I’m not interested in it. I started writing some essays that I sent in to a Burmese website.
I’m living with my mother, my two younger brothers, their wives, and my niece. Buffalo is like the unofficial capital of refugees in New York. Resettled refugees have a wonderful life here. In every place, every corner of the world, they have different kinds of opportunities. But at the same time, there are challenges. For older people, the language barrier is a challenge. Also, culture shock. Young people adapt easily and quickly—it’s both a good thing and a bad thing.
Sometimes it makes me sad. One day, I went with a refugee woman to the clinic. While we were waiting at the clinic, we had a conversation. She said, “Yeah, we have a good life. Good social services. But the thing is, I miss my mountains, my river.” She just said it simply, you know. But it made me sad. Nothing is like home—for me too. But in life, almost 75 percent of what happens, you never expect. The thing is how you deal with the challenges. You can see the cup is half empty, or you can have a half full cup. I always see it as half full.
I want to stay low profile, so I don’t usually want to do interviews. But a journalist came from the Buffalo News to interview me, and they published an article about me. So that’s why when I go to the store or the clinic, they know that I’m a journalist. I think the people should know, so that the next generation knows what we have come through.
In America, I get $10 an hour. In a month, that’s 2,000-something dollars. Maybe for American people, it’s very little money. For me, it’s more than enough. I have a wonderful life. I just share my payment with my mom, and buy food. I only save some money to buy books. People told me I should go to the library, but although I love to read, I love to underline books too. I want to set up a library. One day when I go back to Burma, I will ship all my English books to Burma and I will leave the Burmese books here.
So many Karen people are stateless, but at least now I can apply for permanent residence. At least here we belong to some country. I love Buffalo—we are already Buffalonian. My mom has a wonderful life here, after suffering for almost thirty years.
But just a month ago, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. She is going to have a major operation on July 22. It’s like God’s timing because she kept praying to see me, and now I’m by her side, you know? She’ll have her operation in a few days.
The thing is, life is like that. Nothing is permanent under the sun, my friend. I feel sad sometimes to have left Burma, but now I’m beside my mom. I’m very close to her, you know, so she is very happy that I am here. I have two brothers who are both married and have families now. But I’ve stayed single, so I can be beside my mom. She’s very happy. It’s God’s timing. Simple faith is the most important thing I’ve learned from my mother.
PHOTOGRAPHY IS IN MY HEART
So this is the biggest puzzle of my life. I was crazy for photography—it was almost fifteen years of my life. I got some achievements in Burma. My pictures were published in Time magazine, Newsweek, and also CNN and BBC. I was very proud of it. I have very good connections in Burma. But now I’m here in the United States, and almost all the people in my pictures are in prison. It makes me feel sick.
So that’s why it’s a very sad thing for me now. Sometimes I don’t want to hold the camera, because photography isn’t my job—it’s my heart, it’s my art. It’s very difficult now. Here, and even in Thailand, people came and asked me, “Please take our picture.” I don’t want to take the picture, but I have to. Here in the Burmese community, they come and ask me because they know that I’m a photographer. I should not deny them, because I’m the only one here. But today, I don’t want to take pictures.
When the Buffalo News came to meet me last month, they looked at my pictures, the ones used by CNN and the BBC. They told me, “You should take some more pictures.”
“No,” I said. When I was asleep that night, I had a dream that I was running around shooting pictures with two cameras. And shooting, shooting more, taking many pictures. Then I just ran. And when I woke up, I cried bitterly.
For me, being a journalist is the same as being a pure historian. That’s why I chose to work the way I did. I have a plan. I want to document the first generation of Karen Burmese in Buffalo, and people’s lives on the borders of Burma. I also have a dream to publish a book of photos about Karen people’s lives in different places—inside Burma, in the battlefield, in the conflict areas, the refugee camps, and also America or Canada.
To be honest, when I read the first draft of my story for this book, I cried because I recalled all of the memories. I suffered trauma—that’s why I took a break from my work. Sometimes I don’t want to speak about everything that happened. But I recall everything, and the people should know. It has changed me. I don’t know why, but now I would love to go back to the Burma border. I will try to go there next year.
I would like to go to journalism school because I want to improve my technique. I have been mostly self-taught. Then I want to go to the Thailand–Burma border and share my knowledge with the next young generation of photographers from Burma. That’s why I truly believe that God sent me here to the United States to come and get an experience that I can bring back to Burma.
When I see the images of the refugees, especially of the IDPs (internally displaced people), it makes me want to cry. When I was like twenty-five or thirty years old, I felt very tough. I very rarely shed a tear. I thought I was very strong, but I was blocking the feelings inside my heart. When I did these interviews with you for this book, I didn’t answer with my lips. I answered your questions with my heart. So that’s how it is different, my friend. I used to sell my photos for money, but now I just want to contribute them toward some meaningful mission.
The 2010 elections? One hundred percent dishonesty. They’re already set up. They already have a script. So now all the ethnic armies are ready to fight for everything—Kachin, Kayan, Wa, Shan—they are ready now. Now the SPDC faces a terrible internal situation with the ethnic people. There’s also the international pressure. So we’ll wait and see.
But we will need to do something. As Mother Teresa said, “We cannot do great things. We can only do little things with great love.” When I was a teenager until I was twenty-three or twenty-four, I admired Che Guevara. And now in my thirties, I admire Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa and the way they see the world. They live very simply. They act very simply. And also they did great things with big hearts. It’s wonderful.
1 In 1988, deteriorating economic conditions sparked nationwide protests against the ruling government. See appendix 463-465 for information about the uprising.
2 The International Organization for Migration is an intergovernmental organization that helps organize the travel of migrants, including refugees, across borders.
3 Agence France-Presse and Associated Press.
4 The Zwegabin Hill is a mountain along the Thailand–Burma border, with a peak at 2,372 feet above sea level.
5 After the 1988 uprising, the government closed all universities for three years to prevent further student uprisings.
6 The Burma Socialist Programme Party was the only legal political party in Burma during the years 1962–1988. In 1971, the BSPP changed from a small cadre to a mass party with around 1 million members. The party congress met periodically and repeatedly “elected” Ne Win as its chairman. For more on the Burma Socialist Programme Party, see appendix pages 462-462.
7 The Karen National Union (KNU) is an ethnic opposition organization formed just before Burmese independence, seeking autonomy for the Karen people. The KNU has an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA). The war between the KNLA and Burma’s military is the longest running of the post–WWII era, lasting from 1949 until today. See appendix pages 460-461 for further detail.
8 The National League for Democracy is a political party in Burma formed in the aftermath of the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, and headed by General Secretary Aung San Suu Kyi. The party was the decisive winner of the 1990 elections. See appendix pages 465-468 for further detail. The image of the peacock has been used on flags as an emblem of Burmese nationality throughout Burma’s modern history. The National League for Democracy’s flag which displays the peacock in a fighting stance, was first used by student activists against British colonial rule.
9 On September 18, 1988, a group of generals calling themselves the State Law and Order Restoration Council—SLORC—overthrew the Burma Socialist Programme Party in a coup d’état. The SLORC immediately deployed the army to violently suppress the uprising.
10 Su Su Nway is a labor rights activist who was arrested for putting up anti-government billboards in Rangoon during the Saffron Revolution. She was sentenced to twelve and a half years in prison.
11 1962, 1974, 1988, and 2007 were all years when there were relatively large-scale student demonstrations against the military.
12 Kenji Nagai was a well-known Japanese photojournalist. While covering pro-democracy protests in September 2007, he was shot dead at point-blank range by a Burmese soldier who subsequently confiscated his camera.