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| I'd visited Burma years
before - in the days when only week-long visas were available - and was
moved by its modest, generous people. In public my hosts smiled and
spoke of gilded pagodas and tried to pay my bus fare. But the moment
that we were alone every one of them opened their heart, spoke of the
poverty of their lives and hatred for their government. 'This is a
brutal repressive regime,' I was told. 'We will have to sacrifice
ourselves, or the country will be damned.'
In 1988 the Burmese did sacrifice themselves, in a popular uprising
which left more than 5,000 protesters dead. But unlike the similar
tragedy of Tiananmen Square, there were no television cameras in the
country at the time. The horrific events passed almost unnoticed by the
world's media. The Burmese junta had locked most journalists out of the
country.
The paradox of the gentleness and brutality of these people stayed with
me. Ten years after the uprising I returned to Burma and wrote
'Under the Dragon' in the hope that it might help to draw some attention
to both the events of 1988 and the continuing, tragic situation today.
When I met Suu Kyi she emphasized to me the importance of keeping Burma
in the public eye. The more outsiders who know the truth about the
country, the harder it becomes for the regime to continue to abuse their
people.
If you'd like to know more follow my hot links to organisations like the Burma
Campaign, Burma Project and Tourism Concern who are campaigning for
human rights and democracy in this betrayed land.
'I cannot imagine a better
book on the beauty and terror of Burma. Read it. Read it. Read it.'
Fergal Keane
'Shines with an almost unbearable
poignancy...a beautiful insight into this unhappy land.' Colin Thubron,
The Times
'It will make you cry and it will give you hope. It travels through
modern decayed Rangoon, into the hills with warlords of their tribes, to
the heart of government at its most sinister, and to the place where the
best books go - inside you. It is astonishingly good.' Jeanette Winterson
'a work of great political commitment, powered above all by the author's outrage at the injustices, brutalisation and mass violation of human rights that he witnessed in Burma' William Dalrymple
'Under the
Dragon' is republished by Tauris Parke in 2008. It was first published in 1998 by HarperCollins UK and Canada and Alba
Editorial Spain in 2002.
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to buy in
the USA
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