Text by Sacca Photo
From a photographic point of view, 2021’s attempted coup in Myanmar and the subsequent collapse of the country into civil disobedience and violent rebellion is something of an anomaly. In most cases the toppling of a government or the ferment of a popular revolution — and Myanmar saw both in quick succession — would be a signal for photojournalists from across the region to congregate.
After all, Myanmar wasn’t the country of a decade earlier, isolated by its own leaders and largely ignored by international media. While internally riven by entrenched, decades-long conflicts, these running battles with military forces weren’t initially happening in the inaccessible jungle tracts, but on the streets of its major cities and tourist hotspots.
The events of February 2021 came a year into a global pandemic which saw nations close their borders on an unprecedented scale. There had been little access to Myanmar since the previous March — no commercial flights, no land border crossings, no new visas issued — so there were few foreign journalists in the country when the tanks rolled in and, as far as we were aware, no foreign photographers at all.
The overthrow of Myanmar’s elected government, the uprising of its populace in response, and the country’s eventual descent into nation-wide civil war, is one of the increasingly rare cases where an event of this scale was photographed exclusively by a country’s own people. The images produced over those first months under the junta, shot by a relatively small corps of young Burmese photojournalists, are a phenomenal body of work justly honoured by World Press Photo, the Pulitzer Prizes, POY Asia, the Visa d’or and the Prix Bayeux, amongst others.
The first photographer I saw on the streets of Yangon was Ta Mwe. He wasn’t known as Ta Mwe then, this was before pseudonyms were needed. At the time it wasn’t clear exactly what had happened in Naypyitaw, the seat of government 300km north. Internet connection had been cut early that morning, and in the absence of any verifiable information, we relied heavily on speculation and rumour. Ta Mwe’s earliest images show the gathering of pro-military groups outside Yangon’s City Hall, celebrating the military’s coup and the retaking of the country from Aung San Suu Kyi’s allegedly corrupt National League for Democracy. It was less than a week before those small gatherings of pro-military groups were overwhelmed by the thousands-strong anti-military protests that would become known as the “Spring Revolution.”
Ta Mwe is one of a small group of Myanmar photographers who had embraced analogue processing. He had covered the recent elections on medium-format black and white film, and there was no way he could have foreseen how those early images of ballot boxes would develop into a four-year journey to the heart of an armed rebellion, and a story which would win him a World Press Photo Award. I would see him now and again following the protests, appearing incongruous with his medium-format camera amongst the chaos. His work is some of the most direct and visceral of any shot over those early days and weeks.
Myanmar had been considered a democracy, but a new and not entirely convincing one, and the Burmese people were all too aware of the brutality of the military that was trying to wrest back power. The first few days were quiet. Even so, there was never any doubt that the public response, when it came, would be united and resolute.
Sitting halfway between downtown in the south and the airport in the north and, crucially, abutting Yangon University to its east, Hledan has historically been a focal point for activism and protest. It was no surprise that the first rallies against the dictatorship took hold there, but the speed with which they spread throughout the city, and then the country, was astonishing. The mood, though understandably tense, was overwhelmingly optimistic; there was real belief, perhaps naively, that the coup could be stopped. The images produced over those early days are full of hope and defiance.
Despite an almost carnival-like atmosphere in some sections of the demonstration, within the journalism community the question was not “if” but “when” the protests would be hit by retaliatory violence. The Burmese military are not known for their restraint in the face of resistance. On 9th February, the fourth day of protests, 19-year-old Mya Thwe Thwe Khine was shot in the head with a live round whilst demonstrating in Naypyitaw. Her death was announced ten days later, the first martyr of the revolution.
It certainly wasn’t unexpected but that didn’t make it any less horrifying. And we knew that it was just the beginning.
It was clear that documenting the situation was going to become increasingly dangerous for the photographers, and that danger was exacerbated by the dwindling support available to them. The military had issued directives on how the coup could be reported on and media outlets that refused to comply saw their licenses revoked and their offices ransacked. The Myanmar Times, which boasted the most established and respected photography department in the country, controversially agreed to toe the line but then suspended operations anyway after that decision saw editors, writers and photographers walk out in protest. Half of the Press Council resigned by the end of the first month with members saying they were no longer able to protect press freedom, uphold media ethics, or protect the safety of fellow journalists.
Sacca, alongside others, had worked with photographers in Myanmar for over a decade and we did what we could to fill the support vacuum that was left: providing refuge downtown to rest and recharge equipment, and handing out improvised safety kits of helmets, face masks and first aid supplies.
We were fiercely aware of the fact that very few Burmese photojournalists had any Hostile Environment Training, or any experience of working under these kinds of conditions and yet they went out day after day. The images they made continued to be spectacular.
The fighting escalated and working conditions for photographers continued to deteriorate. In mid-March I was forced to leave Yangon. Whilst at the airport we read the first reports of the massacre in Hlaing Tharyar. It would be a few days before the full horror of what happened in the industrial suburb became clear, but even in the immediate aftermath it felt like a point of no return for the protest movement. Later investigation confirmed that on 14th March, during a crackdown on dissent, at least 65 civilians had been murdered by security forces.
By this point the buoyant, peaceful protest marches were gone, replaced by pitched battles between security forces and the contingent of protestors willing and able to take up whatever arms they could scavenge or make. Photographers on the ground were finding it harder and harder to operate, constantly moving between safehouses with no income, no stability and no security.
Once out of the country and operating under the name “Sacca” (“truth” in the Pali language), we began working out how to support the efforts of the photographers who remained.
Although we talk of Sacca being a photography agency, it operates more like a support network for those continuing to document the situation in Myanmar. The most pressing need at that time was training in how to operate and survive in a dangerous conflict environment. Our first move was to develop Burmese language Hostile Environment and First Aid Training (HEFAT) materials which could be accessed online. The team at Silk Road Training were instrumental in making that possible and to them we are eternally grateful.
The next major problem was financial: how to circumvent Myanmar’s collapsing banking system in order to get money to photographers on the ground. The VII Foundation and the Frontline Club came through with funding to provide small grants and Sacca was able to represent the photographers’ interests with publications whilst protecting their increasingly important anonymity.
As we neared the end of 2021 our small group of photographers had by then access to HEFAT materials to try and keep them safe, small grants to try and keep them financially solvent, and means of getting their images out of the country; in the grand scheme of things this was the best we could have hoped for. But then Soe Naing was murdered.
Soe Naing was a freelance photographer detained whilst photographing a “silent strike” in Yangon – literally making images of empty streets. That was enough provocation for security personnel to seize him, imprison him, and torture him to death. More than 100 journalists had been detained in the ten months since the attempted coup, but up to this point none had lost their life. The murder of Soe Naing caused a pivotal shift in the mentality of the Burmese photojournalist community as a whole – the point where the danger of what they were doing overtook any real benefit they could hope to bring about.
Many had already left for areas controlled by rebel armies along Myanmar’s borders with Thailand and China, and from this point images from those areas would become the principal photography coming out of Myanmar. Photojournalism from the country’s interior all but disappeared.
The junta has shown that it will not stand for photojournalists operating independently in areas under its control. As recently as May 2023, photojournalist Sai Zaw Thaike was arrested while covering the aftermath of Cyclone Mocha in Rakhine State. At the end of a one-day trial in September, during which he was not allowed a lawyer, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison with hard labour.
With central Myanmar virtually impossible to operate from, photojournalism documenting the ongoing revolution is almost exclusively restricted to covering rebel armies and People’s Defence Force (PDF) groups in liberated areas or frontline combat. There has been a movement of photographers to the borders, with many basing themselves in Thailand, and a bias towards coverage of the areas which are most accessible – Karen and Kayah States, and more recently, Tanintharyi – which is indicative of how conflict narratives are driven by banal things such as logistics and bureaucracy.
One of the biggest losses from a photographic point of view lies in the scarcity of non-conflict reportage. War remains a way of life for millions in Myanmar, but not for all. In Yangon, a degree of normality continues but using photography to tell the stories of those living there is now fraught with danger. There are notable examples of artistic expression, but nowhere near enough.
For now, Sacca continues to try and ensure that those who want to use photography to document the situation in Myanmar can continue, so that the world might know what is happening in Myanmar.
