Undercover in Burma: investigating the Saffron Revolution

By foreign affairs editor Peter Cave
Source:(ABC-Australia) Special Report.

Undercover: Peter Cave interviews a student leader

It has now been a year since Burma's military junta brutally put down the so-called Saffron Revolution led by thousands of Buddhist monks, demanding democratic and economic reform.
According to the United Nations, 30 monks and other protesters died, 74 people have never been accounted for and thousands were arrested.

The regime bans most foreign reporters, including those from the ABC, but foreign affairs editor Peter Cave went into the country as a tourist to report for ABC Radio and Television on the anniversary.
As I disembarked from my flight into Rangoon's surprisingly modern and efficient airport, it was not without a little trepidation.
Very few tourists are going to Burma these days and there were just a handful of western faces on the plane.
I had a tourist visa, but I was painfully aware that a simple check of my name on Google by the Burmese embassy in Canberra, or by the security officials in Burma, would mean that I would be instantly arrested.
ABC cameraman Erik Havnen was coming in separately the next day, just in case one of us was stopped.
Each of us carried a small amateur video camera in our hand luggage. I had a laptop computer carefully cleared of any contacts, programs and emails that might prove incriminating. Each of us had a brand new passport with no journalist visas.

The end entry was surprisingly easy, straight through immigration and no baggage check at customs.
I had a pre-arranged meeting with our Burmese fixer at the hotel we had booked through a Bangkok travel agency. The fixer's job is to help with translations, lining up interviews and providing the sort of local knowledge essential not to draw suspicion.
He had been lined up by the ABC's Bangkok office through carefully worded phone calls to provide a tourist service for a Mr Peter, who would be in a certain hotel lobby at a certain time.

All I knew was the name he used - Johnny. He came well-recommended and knew we needed a dependable car and driver.
Risky tourism
My task on day one was to act like a tourist taking lots of touristy pictures to have in the camera in case we were stopped.
At the same time I had to shoot a lot of overlay, the pretty pictures which help flesh out a television story, and to check out the lie of the land.

I sat in the hotel lobby. Nobody looked like an undercover fixer, so Johnny was either good at his job or not there.
Luckily it was the former.
I quickly briefed him on the interviews I wanted: A monk involved in last year's demonstrations and a student leader.
I also wanted to interview a member of the so-called '1988 generation', who took part in the demonstrations which were put down with tanks and guns, with the loss of more than 3,000 lives.
In addition, I needed an interview with an official of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. It was a tall order but within an hour it had all been arranged.
The monk however could only do the interview within the next few hours. He would leave his monastery in plain clothes to avoid the security forces on watch there.
He would change cars twice and then don his saffron robes in the relative safety of my hotel room.
Erik was still not due for a few hours so I would have to shoot the interview myself, without a tripod or proper microphone. Thankfully Johnny had another skill - he knew how to operate a video camera.
The monk arrived in jeans and a T-shirt, his shaven head concealed under a hat. He disappeared into my bathroom and emerged minutes later in saffron robes.
The interview was conducted quickly and the memory card containing the sound and vision quickly removed and hidden. That would be the standard procedure for the next few days. No incriminating footage was ever left in the camera.

The interviews with the student leaders were more problematic.
The Burmese Junta has spies and informers everywhere but again, Johnny had a plan. He would arrange an excursion to a wildlife reserve in the jungle an hour's drive from Rangoon and the interviewees would meet us there.
Erik was now in town, having successfully evaded detection at the airport.
We already had plenty of street shots, including shots of the breathtaking Shwedagon Pagoda in the heart of Burmese Buddhism. We had even managed to secretly film the security forces at work from a moving car.
The drive to the wildlife reserve provided some shots of huge stacks of teak logs ripped from the jungle and awaiting export for the further enrichment of the military Junta.

But when we got there, Johnny and the interviewees were tense. In the clearing we had chosen for the interview were a young couple on a motorbike.
I soon discovered the reason for the tension, as Johnny explained that only members of the security forces were allowed to own a motorbike and the young man was clearly an off-duty soldier.
Luckily the couple soon moved on and the interviews were safely recorded and quickly hidden away.
The interview with the politician was again conducted in a hotel room. All that was left now was to record the piece to camera and here a monsoonal downpour came to our aid.

Erik sat in the front passenger seat of our car and filmed me talking in the back seat as we drove through central Rangoon, the windows misted with rain which also kept the police and their undercover spies off the streets.
Our job was finished and thankfully, airport security was as lax going out as it had been coming in.