Burma Issues uses video to document the systematic repression of civilians by Burma’s military government and to educate and mobilize grassroots communities within Burma. Alongside the repression in urban areas demonstrated in the junta’s responses to the summer 2007 demonstrations in Rangoon and elsewhere, an estimated 600,000-1 million people in rural eastern Burma have been driven from their homes and communities by the army and have become internally displaced. Over 3000 villages have been destroyed or forcibly abandoned in the past decade – an average of almost one a day. The Burmese military government also regularly practices forced labor, forced relocation, and the arbitrary killing of its own people. Working with WITNESS, Burma Issues provides video footage of these human rights abuses to the global public and media, as well as to human rights decision-making bodies at an international level.

Burma Issues’ recent videos have targeted international audience including UN representatives, key donors supporting aid to refugees and IDPs, officials and parliamentarians from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, the US, the UK and other foreign countries, as well as activist and lobbying groups and the mass media.

From 2002 to 2007, WITNESS worked with Burma Issues to support the movement to internationalize the systematic repression of civilians by Burma's military government, and to place footage documenting that issue in front of activists and government officials worldwide. The rising profile of this crisis helped lead to Burma being placed on the permanent agenda of the UN Security Council in September 2006. Burma Issues videos were also used to support pushes for increased funding in the US and the UK, including screenings and individual distribution of DVDs to key Congresspersons in the US in advance of the review of a significant rise in funding. Footage from Burma Issues was also used to buttress a critical BBC “Newsnight” item in June 2006 that criticized the current Labour administration in the UK for its minimal levels of funding, and helped push the government to conduct an official review that, in July 2007, recommended a four-fold increase in aid to internally displaced persons.

Their latest internationally distributed video, “Shoot on Sight”, draws on the voices of the internally displaced people themselves to make the case for international action by the UN Security Council and a tougher stance on the SPDC regime by Burma’s neighbors in Asia, particularly within ASEAN. The video was used in lobbying and activism by advocates in Asia during the ASEAN Civil Society Parallel Summit in December 2006, at a public forum in Indonesia and screened for parliamentarians from across the world attending the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Bali in 2007.

Footage has also been leveraged for broader press use, where possible in targeted support of advocacy. Images and testimonies from civilians on the ground have been screened on CNN, PBS in the USA, Channel 4 in the UK, on Canada’s “The National” evening news broadcast, as well as on BBC’s premier current affairs program “Newsnight.” ‘Shoot on Sight’ was frequently cited by bloggers as evidence of the broader pattern of abuse in Burma, and on YouTube, the video with its Rights Alert version, received three-quarter of a million hits, making ‘Shoot on Sight’ one of the most-watched videos on Burma. .

For more information on this partnership, please contact Ryan Schlief, Program Coordinator for Asia