Burma: The Ineffectiveness of our Outcry

While there has been much international attention being given to the subject in the past week, the abduction of Burmese monks who express too much intellectual independence is nothing new. Nor is it something that will change in the near future, despite our outcry.

While visiting Myanmar last year, I met a young monk in the ancient wooden Shwe In Bin Monastery in Mandalay. With great sadness, he described how his most inspirational teachers are taken “away” on a regular basis; simply for passing on their Theravada Buddhist wisdom.

What’s new is the scale. The last time large scale demonstrations happened was in 1988. Thousands of civilians were massacred.

But protests have continued. Quietly.

In Yangon, I was especially struck by meeting a group of young artists. Htein Lin had recently gotten out of a seven year prison sentence, during which he painted direct reflections of existence in the Myanmar prison system. In some, the portrayed figures lay maimed; twisted in agony. Others define his own practices of meditation and patience. At one point, he was discovered and put in a dark room for eight months. Still he continued to paint, and the images are a poignant testament to the severity of the regime. Fortunately he has managed to escape Myanmar and has now settled in London, where he can let communicate the work that he had smuggled first out of prison and then out of the country.

After being released, Htein Lin teamed up with Chaw Ei Thein to create public performance art that manifested the restrictions imposed by the junta. Street performance offers a safer platform for artistic expression through its intangibility; there is no concrete evidence of protest. Chaw Ei Thein showed me photographs of one such performance at the Shwedagon Pagoda. Her whole body was tightly bound in white cloth, which severely constricted her movement. A shredded Styrofoam cup adorned her shiny black hair, and her beautiful face was twisted in discomfort and frustration. Slowly she moved around the stairs that ascended to the pagoda. The artists said that people were generally too timid to respond to their work. However the universal language manifested through their performances is easily interpreted.

It’s amazing how resilient the human spirit can remain, even in the direst of circumstance.

After reigning for nearly four decades, the Military Junta knows well how to aggressively control its population. Unfortunately, as long as China supports Myanmar’s government, nothing will change. The route through Myanmar is China’s most direct access to the Indian Ocean, and valuable in maintaining those trade routes. China also has almost exclusive dibs on Myanmar’s resources because of sanctions imposed by nearly the rest of the world. For these reasons, as well as their continued suppression of the Tibetan Buddhists, I just don’t see why China would be at all motivated to change their approach.

And this is what brings me tremendous sorrow. I’ve visited over 40 countries in this world, and never have I met a population so kind and so gentle. I will never forget several people risking their own safety by gently taking my arm, looking intensely into my eyes and saying in low voices, “It is really horrible here. I hate our government..”

My work about Burma includes “Cusp of Genocide: Myanmar” an installation of oil paintings on shotgunned plywood which portray Bamar schoolchildren. They were exhibited during the 7th International Conference of Genocide Scholars in Sarajevo, July 2007.

Portraits of cotton weavers on Inle Lake were also included in the exhibit “Weave” at Weilworks in Denver, June 2007. These figures were deeply embedded in the architecture of their looms to echo how cut off they are to the rest of the world, and how slowly their technology is developing due to their isolation.

I will be developing a series of “Confined Shrines” during a residency at the Ragdale Foundation in February 2008. They will be mixed media works on paper of the Buddhist shrines housed behind steel cages that I found in throughout Myanmar.

Lee Lee
http://www.painterleelee.com

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