Find this story in Sept mook #54, Birmanie, la guerre oubliée
If we had invented this story, you would have accused us of overdoing it.
Twin children leading a mystical army. Drug lords entrenched in the mountains. Missionaries turned war rescuers. A dissident under house arrest, turned into a global icon. Monks defying a dictatorship by turning their alms bowls upside down. A cyclone that generals refuse to acknowledge. New cities built under the influence of astrologers. And everywhere, always, civilians crushed by the great machine of history.
Yet, it is all true.
It all begins in the summer of 2023, when I receive a message from Thierry Falise. This great Belgian reporter, based in Bangkok since the 1990s, offers me stories about Burma. A connoisseur of Southeast Asia, which he has traveled since the end of the Cold War, he explains that he has "spent a lot of time covering a dozen ethnic rebellions on the ground." He is ready to open his war notebooks to us, texts and images.
A privilege. Because the Golden Land into which Falise has delved, often clandestinely, possesses the power of a great fresco.
Walter, Bo Mya, Khun Sa, the Htoo brothers, Aung San Suu Kyi, Paw Htoo, David Eubank, Maui, the monks of Yangon, the survivors of the delta, the young Karen resistors: the heroes doubt, the victims resist, the leaders liberate as much as they dominate, the believers heal and fight. Reality does not like pre-written roles.
In the footsteps of the great reporter, you traverse forty years of a complex and fractured country, caught in the grip of dictatorships, ethnic divisions, deeply rooted spiritualities, and coveted resources. A country where one can encounter, on the same day, infinite gentleness and nameless brutality.
Bon voyage.
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by Patrick Vallélian
