ONE WORLD 2012: The Voice of Burma
Date: 16 May 2012 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
Venue: EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, Yehudi Menuhin space, ASP bldg, Rue Wiertz, 1047 Bruxelles. SPECIAL SECURITY ARRANGEMENTS APPLY - PLEASE SEE BELOW.
Film by Burmas Stemme / Turid Rogne / Norway / 2011 / 64 min (in competition).
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“We don’t see it as work. It is our destiny, our future,” says the Burmese editor in chief of the small Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) radio station, which he founded with a few compatriots in the early 1990s in Oslo, Norway. The aim of their émigré radio station was to bring free information to their homeland, where independent media essentially does not exist. As a result, DVB’s reporters have been present at all important political events in Burma, culminating in 2007’s violently suppressed Saffron Revolution. None of the protests moved the repressive military regime. In 2011, the junta held parliamentary elections. This documentary follows the preparations of DVB’s editorial team to cover this crucial moment in their country’s history, which they decided to broadcast live on TV. Despite some initial difficulties with transmission, the reporters succeed in producing authentic testimony of the course of the elections, including the moving moment when the regime releases the opposition politician and human rights defender Aung San Suu Kyi.
Guests will include Debbie Stothard, the deputy secretary-general of FIDH, and Yin Myo, a political activist from the Burmese Women´s Union.
Screening sponsored by MEP Libor Rouček.
This screening is part of the One World in Brussels 2012 film festival.