Myanmar Diaries

Two years and one month after the military coup in Myanmar, the BristolWithMyanmar campaign will be showing Myanmar Diaries at Bristol’s Cube Cinema on March 1st, from 7pm. It is a film about life under the regime of terror in Myanmar since February 1st 2021, told through personal stories by a group of anonymous young Burmese filmmakers (the Myanmar Film Collective).

This is the second annual event at the Cube, following on from last year’s A night of solidarity with Myanmar, organised by Bristolians, solidarity activists and people from Myanmar living in exile – who are a part of the With Myanmar Facebook group, which works to raise awareness and fundraise for groups in Myanmar.
At the event there will Burmese street food for sale to raise money for good causes in Myanmar. The film will be followed by a Q & A with a leading Myanmar activist, and discussion. For more info see the Myanmar Diaries film website; watch the film trailer (on youtube); and get your tickets here (£5 minimum). The following text is taken from the campaign group’s Press Release dated 1.2.23:

Myanmar Diaries is ten short films by young Burmese filmmakers, combined with emotionally harrowing citizen journalism documenting the junta’s brutality, as well as the courageous resistance to it. This is an important film showing at a time when Myanmar has almost disappeared from the news headlines around the world. Greater support, especially from the former colonial power, is urgently needed.

Zunetta Herbert (Bristol-based activist of Burmese heritage): “For the first time since independence from UK, people in Myanmar have a fighting chance of overthrowing the military, but they receive no attention and no support. Bristol has a long history of supporting justice, and recognising our collective responsibility for our colonial past: Bristol needs to stand up for Burma.”

Stephen McNamara (former BCC Legal officer & volunteer worker in Myanmar): “The Ukraine war is rightly in the headlines, but the fate of 54 million people in Myanmar is just as urgent as they face mass murder by their own military. In my time in Myanmar I was welcomed by young students desperate for knowledge of the outside world and to know how the law works in democracies. Now their democracy is dead.”

For further information/interviews: Zunetta Herbert who has worked on or in Myanmar for nearly 40 years, and Burmese people based in Bristol (who would use aliases as they are fearful of consequences for their families back home) are available. Contact bristolwithmyanmar@gmail.com
Background info:
Myanmar, otherwise known as Burma, was a British colony that has not experienced peace since independence in 1948. It has been run by the military since 1962 with many uprisings since then. A brief spell of quasi-democracy during the much lauded ‘transition’ of 2010-2020 ended when the military staged a coup on the eve of the second term of the freely elected government, on 1st February 2021.

In the first weeks after the coup there was an extraordinary flowering of creative and impassioned mass protests across the country involving many millions of people. Unlike previous uprisings, this time young people have had a taste of freedom, better connections, and mutual understanding with the ethnic groups who have been fighting the army for decades.

These young people, from all nationalities and religions, will not give up their dreams of a federal democratic Myanmar – the only future they want – and many have joined the armed resistance, underground disrupters, and diaspora groups raising funds for their comrades in Myanmar.

In the two years since the coup, 19,000 people have been murdered (many in airstrikes by the military), over two million people are homeless (having had their homes burned down by the military, or fleeing the fighting) and 13,642 people are rotting in jails (https://acleddata.com/conflict-severity-index/ and https://aappb.org/ ).
Two activists (so far) have been executed, while 12 others face the same fate. Many elected politicians have been given decades long jail terms.

Useful news sources for info: Myanmar Now; Frontier Myanmar; The Irrawaddy;