Tony, for two weeks you have been the eyes of millions of viewers all around the world. What words would you choose to describe the revolution in Burma to those who weren’t able to see the images?
I saw tens of thousands of people protesting on the streets, the army brutally put that protest down, they arrested them, they beat them, they fired shots. There was so much confusion. I think in the whole time when the protest was going on, at least 9 or 10 times shots were fired, near or over us. I saw one person fall down, I think, from a bullet wound and I couldn’t see him after that.
Which is, according to you, the most representative shot that best synthesizes the meaning of the protest?
The mass of monks who were demonstrating peacefully near the Shwedagon Pagoda and then the military decided that they wouldn’t allow that any longer. So they viciously attacked the monks and arrested them. That showed to me that military have no respect for the monks, because monks in Myanmar are greatly revered, almost like the Pope. People bow in front of monks, they treat them with a lot of respect. And it was such a shock to see the soldiers and the riot police treating them in this way.
What were the feelings of the people you interviewed during the protest and the clashes with the army? Were they afraid of you filming them or they wanted to speak out about the violence and abuses of their government?
It sort of changed from the first day when there were the big demonstrations and the people were getting braver and bolder: they started to believe that with the leadership of the monks maybe this would bring about some kind of change. But as the days went by and the way they saw the military and the police stopping this demonstrations, they became more scared, more frightened and more reluctant to talk to me. On the first day they would talk to me quite openly about the brutality of this regime, how cruel they were; by the end of it, nobody would want to speak to me on camera because they were scared. One man said to me: “If you make the mistake in your country, then they arrest you. In Myanmar, if I make the mistake, they arrest me, my wife, my children, my father, my mother, my cousin, my entire family and that’s it”. So from this conversation I understood how the fear of this military junta was deep rooted.
The monks with their strong charisma and willpower have been able to break through that wall of fear which, according to you, dwells in every soul.
Yes, the monks are the ones that lead this revolution and, to understand it deeply, you need to put it in the context: there has been nothing like this in almost 20 years. And the last time something like this happened, in 1988, again the military cruelly putted it down, and killed something like 3000 people. And those memories have not gone away: people still remember that this terrible things happened 20 years ago. And the death toll probably was higher, so people will never know how many people were killed in 1988 because there are no accurate figures to show. The Burmese population is very understanding of this regime and what is capable of doing. So once it looked like the whole march, movement, protest for democracy was finishing, then people began to look for themselves and began to be very frightened. Having said that, a number of people spoke to me and said “This is not finished, it will carry on, in some form, at some time”. And I think the problems in Myanmar are so deep rooted and difficult that people are living this terrible life, that eventually it will happen again and again. Till, maybe, one day Myanmar will have democracy.
During the two weeks you stayed there, did you feel that hope in the population increased or did they started feeling as if they were loosing the battle?
I think they felt as they lost the battle but not the war. This is a strong spirit that came alive for only a few days but it showed there was energy there, and I’m sure that it will rise again. Speaking to them there were mixed feelings: they had feelings that maybe this would bring about real and lasting change and, finally, the International community would do something, but then they were overcome by the realization that really the International community can’t do very much, they didn’t have tremendous hope when I was there and Mr. Ibrahim Gambari (the UN’s envoy to Myanmar) came to visit.
On newspapers there are some experts who think that Burma could end up being ruled by foreign countries and become a sort of Iraq after the US invasion. What do you think about this?
There is a lot of propaganda and counter-propaganda going on. You have to look to Myanmar’s history. It was almost fragmented when it became independent due to more or less 10 different ethnic tribes fighting between them and against the government. So at the beginning, people tended to welcome the military for taking over control and bringing stability to the country. But now, it has gone too far. You see these generals living in a kind of “Neverland” in Naypyidaw, the new capital, which is no grasp on reality. If you saw the video last year of General Than Shwe’s daughter getting married, you could see the diamonds she had, and the opulence, the luxury. Then you put that into context by looking at the basic living conditions in Rangoon and you will see a completely different game and you understand that there is such an inequality in a country that was once prosperous, has wonderful natural resources, should be doing well. Myanmar used to produce more rice in any other country in Asia and now it is in complete dire straits and you understand why these problems will be keep coming up again.