I began planning my trip into Burma sometime in April this year. At first I thought I would take a month off writing and go in mid-September. I found a monastic school in Mandalay where I could stay and made contact. I planned to teach for July and August, spend a few weeks getting ready, then take off.
For a number of reasons, I ended up pushing back my travel date to October 22nd and now it seems like I may not go at all. I haven’t heard any word from the monastery where I had planned to stay but the monasteries in Rangoon are emptying. Monks are disappearing and being arrested. Bodies of robed men float in rivers and photographs come out of empty monk’s quarters where nothing is left of the monks save the pools of their blood.
We sit in front of our computers, just 6 kilometers from the border crossing into a country that is exploding, hoping for news. For anyone doing the same, some of the best news is coming from amazing people blogging from Burma and getting news out of a country which is increasingly tightening controls on internet and phone lines.
MizzimaNews has some of the best breaking news but
Ko-Htike,
Moemaka, and
Niknayman have information directly from the inside with disturbing pictures and videos to match.
I am currently in Chiang Mai living at a school for women and teaching there for a few days. Yesterday we practiced reading strategies while looking at the news. I stood beside a woman who cried silently looking at pictures of the dead bodies of monks.
After that, I couldn’t stand the soft, cultured voice on the BBC anymore. We listened to a reporter from Singapore who was in Rangoon for a few days and delivered richly descriptive reports missing several key facts.
“The key difference,” say the BBC voices, “is that, unlike the demonstrations in 1988 when an estimated 3,000 lost their lives, the Burmese protesters today have access to the internet, to blogs, to digital cameras and the media.”
It seems to be doing very little good. Just how many dead bodies do they have to document before someone does anything? Does anyone have any idea what the death toll of this government is since it first slaughtered those 3,000 in the streets of Rangoon in 1988?
So we sit here, on the border waiting for a massacre, wondering just how many bodies have to pile up.
The waiting is driving me crazy.
Photographs from my recent weekend birthday adventure in Singapore. One of these days I'll write something again but for now, I spent my birthday wandering the city streets in large sunglasses made in the 70's and the evening dining on a feast of food at Newton Circus.
Yes, I am now 26 years old.
