Photo essay: Myanmar's Kachin rebels

By Nick March, May 5, 2012 ...

 Child soldiers who deserted to the Kachin Independence Army protect their identities by covering their faces in their sleeping quarters in Laiza.

While Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party took up their seats in Myanmar's parliament earlier this week - seemingly ushering in a tentative new era of democracy in this isolated country - the situation remains perilous in Kachin, Myanmar's northernmost state.

Brennan O'Connor is a Canadian photographer based on the Thai-Myanmarese border where he is at work on a book called Beyond Borders, which will document the plight of Myanmar's minorities. The photographs you see here will form a small part of that bigger picture.

O'Connor says he likes his photography to focus on "underreported stories" and that he wants to record subjects that "require international attention but, for whatever reason, remain largely unknown".

He began working in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, in 2009 after becoming frustrated by the often one-dimensional coverage of the country's complex political landscape.

"That situation persists," he says, "with Burma making headlines around the world, all eyes are trained on Suu Kyi's acceptance into parliament and the move towards democracy. This is important, but it is only part of the reality."

Another part of that reality is Kachin, where democratic elections were cancelled and conflict rages almost daily between Myanmar's military and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). Tens of thousands of civilians have been forced out of their homes by the battles being waged on land bordered by India and China.

The seeds of this dispute were sown half a century ago when General Ne Win, then Myanmar's prime minister, began to exert more authority over the regions. Kachin responded in kind by asserting its own right of independence and a bloody and drawn-out conflict began in earnest.

In 1994, a ceasefire was negotiated between the KIA and the government in Myanmar. This fragile peace held until last year, when the Myanmarese army began another brutal campaign of violence, in an attempt to break the will of the people and to force this rogue army to become amalgamated into the Myanmarese military. Meanwhile, the KIA and the Kachin Independence Organisation, its associated political wing, has moderated its demands from independence to autonomy.

Nevertheless, it is a chronically mismatched struggle: the KIA remains a badly equipped and undermanned force when compared to the might of an aggressive military intent on uprooting and unsettling the Kachin people.

Worse still, the Myanmarese armed forces are reported to have bolstered their arsenal with other, darker weapons of war and have torched entire settlements, arrested villagers en masse and, in some cased, attacked and raped civilians. This is a developing and deepening humanitarian crisis that demands broader attention.

O'Connor's pictures record the experiences of new KIA recruits, who are often fast-tracked into the front lines after the briefest of training periods and the most formal of graduation ceremonies.

Nick March is editor of The Review. 

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/photo-essay-myanmars-kachin-rebels