those who are not afraid to die, come in front

[garlicbreath]

Click to view

Spring is for daffodils and demonstrations. 4.19 4.29 5.18 6.4 We work around the terminology of massacre and protest, riot and repression, with numbers and dates. The Human Rights Film Festival here in Seoul screened Burma VJs: Reporting from a Closed Country last weekend, the screen set up outside at Cheonggye Plaza in between the headquarters of the two most conservative daily newspapers - Chosun Ilbo and Donga Ilbo. (I kept giggling at the contrast between the looming buildings and the %$#@! lollipop unicorn horn that somehow got commissioned for this public plaza.)

Anyway, the documentary is incredible. "Sometimes I feel like the world has forgotten about us." It's been less than two years since the protests in Burma and I already had forgotten. The courage of everyday people, bystanders protecting protesters from thugs, monks protecting reporters from government intelligence. Shooting from backpacks, camcorders under armpits. There are bits of footage that would slip without a ripple into a Hollywood spy blockbuster, silhouettes and headsets, the ominously shrill ringing cellphone, code names, but this is real life and when the reporters complain that the satellite connection is too slow to upload, it's nothing and everything like Mission Impossible.

When the monk muses, "Suppose we invite the public directly to join? Would it be fruitful?" and then you see the people of Rangoon posted on their rooftops, clapping and cheering, and crowded on balconies with their hands linked, and in buses, and in streets, waving and smiling, you are smiling and clapping too. "Fear is so deep in everybody" but for a few days nobody is scared. The documentary ends the way we know, loudspeakers, soldiers, guns, dead bodies, arrests, the offices of Democratic Voice of Burma raided, "the scene is full of smoke and pigeons," and the last reporter with one of the last clutches of demonstrators puts away the video camera and just dials in for audio. The protesters are trapped, nowhere to go except against the soldiers and their guns, and we hear a voice call, "Those who are not afraid to die, come in front."