The Irrawaddy Magazine

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A Conversation With Burma’s First Hijacker Posted: 24 Dec 2013 11:18 PM PST Maj. Saw Kyaw Aye, 90, attempted to hijack an airplane 60 years ago with military officers on board. (Photo: The Irrawaddy) RANGOON — He was 30 years old when he attempted to pull of the first-ever hijacking in Burma. It was 1954, and Maj. Saw Kyaw Aye, an ethnic Karen from the Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO), wanted to commandeer a Dakota airplane and take it to an air base in the mountains of Karen State where Japanese forces had left behind weapons that could prove crucial in his organization's war against government troops. He and a small team of three Karen men used take names to buy Union of Burma Airways tickets from Rangoon to the Arakan State capital, Sittwe. The airplane took off on June 25 with four crew members and 14 passengers, including military officers. Before reaching Sittwe, the four Karen men forced an early landing, with plans to fly next to Karen State. But they ran into a problem: They lacked enough fuel to reach their final destination and had to abandon the mission. After the botched hijacking, Saw Kyaw Aye collaborated with the government and Karen rebels to push for a peace deal that could end years of fighting. Those efforts were also unsuccessful, with the war continuing for several decades. A ceasefire was signed in 2012 but peace negotiations continue. Today, at the age of 90, Saw Kyaw Aye is reminiscing about his hijacking attempt, which will be the topic of a movie expected to premier in June 2014. He sat down with The Irrawaddy recently to share some of his memories. Question: How many people were involved in the hijacking? Answer: I undertook the mission with three other people, planning secretly. Only the top leaders in the KNDO knew about it—even my family members did not know. My children did not find out until one month after the hijacking. It was top secret. I was married and had two children at the time. My youngest daughter was only two-and-a-half years old. Q: Were you willing to sacrifice everything if your mission failed and you were arrested? A: Yes. My wife had relatives who could take care of her. Q: How long were you in the plane before landing in Arakan State's Gwa Township? A: It was about two hours in the airplane before landing in Magyizin village, Gwa Township. I only planned to take the plane. I told the pilots and passengers that we were not enemies but revolutionaries, and that we did not plan to hurt the people. Q: After taking control of the plane, where did you intend to go? A: Our target place was near the Burma-Thailand border. Over the Dawna mountain range there was a small airport belonging to the former Japanese troops. We planned to land there, where there were weapons left over from British and Japanese troops. Then I intended to load these weapons onto the plane, to fight the government. At that time, the government army had big weapons but we did not, and this is why we lost battles, because we did not have big weapons. Q: After you abandoned the plane in Arakan State's Gwa Township, what did you do? A: There was no response from our KNDO leaders. They knew the mission had not been completed, but at the time they were running away from their headquarters because they were under attack by government troops. The mission failed because the fuel was gone, and we did not dare land in territory other than our own territory. Q: What were your responsibilities with the KNDO after the hijack attempt? A: I was a major, and I guarded the headquarters after the hijacking. A few years later I returned to the legal force, in 1956. After that I became a peacemaker between the government and Karen organizations, and I have also worked for religious affairs. Q: What was your role in the peace process? A: There were a lot of peace discussions between the government and armed groups. A caretaker government was in power when I pioneered the peace process. I spoke with Gen. Ne Win during the peace process and was sent more than three times to meet armed groups in their territories, but the process was not successful. It was more than three years that I worked for the peace process. I did as much as I could, but it all failed. At that time I was working with some Karen government officials, including Gen. Kyar Doe and Gen. Smith Doon. That was between 1959 and 1963. Q: Can you share your thoughts on recent peace negotiations between President Thein Sein's government and some of the country's biggest armed forces, including the Karen National Union (KNU)? A: It can be successful if the government follows through on its promises in the peace process. I heard there has been some fighting between the government and armed forces even after ceasefire agreements. Q: What does the government require to forge long-lasting peace with ethnic armed groups? A: The government has said several times over the years that peace talks will follow disarmament. This was not successful in the past. Now ethnic people are calling for democracy and a federal policy. It's complicated. The post A Conversation With Burma's First Hijacker appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

‘I’ve Always Looked for Ways to Expose the Country’s Real Situation’ Posted: 24 Dec 2013 09:47 PM PST Shin Daewe, pioneering documentary maker, during an interview at the office of the Wathan Film Festival. (Photo: Sai Zaw / The Irrawaddy) RANGOON — Shin Daewe took an interest in Burma's social and political issues from an early age when, as a teenager, she was swept up in the prodemocracy movement and political turmoil that rocked the country some 25 years ago. "I passed all my youth under military rule," said the 40-year-old, pioneering woman filmmaker during an interview at the office of the Wathan Film Festival in Rangoon. Shin Daewe was detained for one month in 1990 and for one year in 1991 for distributing posters and poems that commemorated Phone Maw, a Rangoon Institute of Technology student who was gunned down while participating in the '88 Uprising. "Since then, I've always looked for ways to oppose the government and expose the country's real situation," Shin Daewe recalled her formative years as a teenager and student. During her time at Rangoon University, she first wrote poems and works of fiction that were published in magazines in the 1990s, but she was also drawn to the medium of film. From 1997 to 2000, she worked as an assistant producer with Audio Visual (AV) Media, Burma's first private documentary film company, where she gained valuable filmmaking experience. Later, she attended a workshop at Yangon Film School, a Berlin-based non-profit organization founded by the Anglo-Burmese documentary filmmaker Lindsey Merrison, where she further developed her interest and skills in documentary making. "I found that documentary is writing like poems and fictions with pictures instead of words," she recalled her shift from literary work to filmmaking. In her early documentary-making days, few people in Burma had been exposed to the concept of documentary films. "Burmese people who purchased our documentaries while I worked in AV were very few. Most clients were foreigners who wanted to know about Burma," she said. Since Burma's much-publicized reforms began in 2011, this has all changed and three annual local film festivals have now been established: the Wathan Film Festival, the Freedom Film Festival and the Human Rights Film Festival. Shin Daewe said she produced 12 documentaries since 2005, two of which picked up best documentary awards in Burma this year. "Take me home," a film about ethnic Kachin villagers displaced by conflict in northern Burma, won the Wathan Film Festival. "A Bright Future," a film about a child-centered education system at a Mandalay monastery, won the Freedom Film Festival. Her latest documentary, released three months ago, is called "I am 13." It focuses on the life of Aye Kaung who is illiterate, but desperately wants to learn to read and write. She never received education and spends her time herding goats in her village near Bagan in Burma's impoverished central dry zone. Shin Daewe said the film is meant as a social commentary on the life of Burma's forgotten poor, adding, "I think there is someone who has a responsibility for girls like her in a time when basic education is free and for all." Shin Daewe said her documentaries focus on communal life and problems in Burma, but she also has as strong interest in the country's political transformation. In 2010, she began producing a documentary about Burma's political transition and those who suffered under military rule. The film is due to be released in 2015 ahead of the country's first free and fair elections. "I decided that instead of filming documentary just for art, I want all of my documentaries to support our country's transformation," said Shin Daewe, whose films have also been shown at numerous foreign film festivals. Thu Thu Shein, a former Yangon Film School student and one of the founders of the Wathan Film Festival, said Shin Daeawe is one of Burma's most talented documentary makers. "She is one of the pioneer female documentary filmmakers in our country. She can present confidently all topics that she wants without fear," Thu Thu Sein said. Shin Daewe said there is a growing appetite in Burma for documentaries as the public has begun to appreciate the powerful realism offered by the films. "Burmese people are more interesting documentaries now. Every film festival draws a full crowd," she said, adding, "A documentary is about real life, real people and real people's stories." Shin Daewe credits the influence of 'Burma VJ', a documentary about the crushing of the 2007 Saffron Revolution by the military regime, as exposing the wider Burmese public to the power of documentaries. "Until 2010, documentary films were distributed secretly by the young people with a passion for them. Burma VJ was spread widely at that time and it shook the public," she said. Shin Daewe also filmed material during the turbulent weeks of August 2007, when tens of thousands of monks took to the streets to protest against military rule, but was apprehended by police. "I threw my camera and hand phone away. So, they just charged me for watching the revolution," she recalled laughing. Shin Daewe's future in the new, reforming Burma looks bright, however. Recently, she was one of three Burmese documentary filmmakers who were selected to receive a grant from the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), based in the Netherlands. Out of some 400 applicants 13 are receiving IDFA support. Among them are Burmese filmmakers Thu Thu Shein, Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi and Shin Daewe, who will capture their changing country on film. "I think people are start having good opinion of Myanmar. In the past, our country was on blacklist and famous for its bad reputation in world, but now they started giving us a helping hand," Shin Daewe said. The post 'I've Always Looked for Ways to Expose the Country's Real Situation' appeared first on The Irrawaddy Magazine.

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