Filmed in 1996, ‘Inside Burma’ exposes the history and brutality of one of the world’s most repressive regimes. Nearly the size of Texas, with a population of more than 40 million, Burma has rich natural resources probably unequalled in Asia. Yet Burma is also a secret military country. Isolated for the past 40 years, since a brutal military dictatorship seized power in Rangoon, this rich country has been relegated to one of the world’s poorest, the assault on its people all but forgotten by the rest of the world.
 

Award-winning filmmakers John Pilger and David Munro go undercover to expose how the former British colony is ruled by a harsh, bloody and uncompromising military regime. More than a million people have been forced from their homes and untold thousands killed, tortured ad subjected to slavery.
 

Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of the assassinated independence leader Aung San, spent 6 years under house arrest. In 1990 her party, the National League for Democracy, won 82% of the parliamentary seats. The generals, shocked by an election result they never expected, threw 2000 of the newly-elected MPs into prison. Suu Kyi’s party has never been allowed to take elected office. She warns that, far from liberalizing life in Burma, foreign investment and tourism can further entrench the military regime.
 

“Although Inside Burma was made more than a decade ago, it might have been filmed in recent weeks and months. David Munro and I filmed under cover, and the rare footage of child slavery answers those who already defy Aung Suu Kyi’s call for a tourism and business boycott. The interview with Suu Kyi was conducted in secret and the film sent out of the country through underground resistance that has never been extinguished by the junta. The monks and students may have been publicly silenced, but they remain the bravest of the brave, and the spirit of their uprising resounds in this film”. ~ John Pilger, 2007.

 

Running Time: 60 minutes

PAL – All Regions (1-6)