| Born in Kobe (JAPAN), Yuzo Uda
at 27, left his teaching job and Japan behind him in 1990, by going
to Boston, USA, to study photojournalism. |
| Upon graduation, he turned his
love for photography towards social documentary. And, most specifically,
towards the lives of people living under military regimes. Starting
in El Salvador, he has since gone on to spend periods in Guatemala,
Nicaragua, and most noticeably, Burma. |
| However, having spent three years in the Third World,
and experiencing social conditions of oppression at first hand, he
nevertheless felt the urge to broaden his understanding of global
politics by reading an M.A. in International Law. |
| This took him to 1995, the year of the terrifying
earthquake in Kobe. Yuzo was there on the fateful day. Without irony
however, he feels fortunate to have done so, because for the first
time he felt he could truly understand what it was like to be a victim.
In Kobe, the victim was one of a natural geological disaster, but
nevertheless, it provided a parallel insight into how oppression feels,
and how perhaps rather perversely, it can improve the spirit. "I realised"
he says "that it's a very good experience, one way or another to be
a victim". |
| Since which time, he has recommenced his work in
the Third World ... and particularly so in Burma, where he returns
time and again. The series here, brings together six of his favourite
images from this strife-torn nation - a country, in which, John Pilger,
the renowned newspaper and television journalist, describes as the
"Land of Fear". The images in front of you place particular emphasis
on documenting the lives of the Karens, an ethnic group of over 5
million people, i.e. more than 10% of the Burmese population. Despite
their size however, the military government, the generals, deny their
existence. Indeed are trying to persecute them out of it. |
| Oppression of the Burmese people by the military
government is rife. Slave labour, child labour is an unfortunate reality,
anachronistic though it may seem. Despite having 82% of the popular
vote in the election, Aung San Suu Kyi, the voice for democracy, was
put under house arrest by the generals. The people had spoken, yet
those with the guns, the military, sought to kill such expression
by the bullet. |
| Amongst the worst group affected are the Karens.
Perhaps not surprisingly, since they had already been in conflict
against the military rulers longer than any other part of Burmese
society. For them, the struggle preceded the eighth minute, of the
eighth hour, of the eighth day, of the eighth month, in the year of
1988. Long before. Taking up arms in 1949, they have continued to
fight to protect and preserve their own identity and culture. Besides
the fighting, other forms of oppression have long since been inflicted
on the Karen people. Leading to 110,000 of them fleeing to Thailand.
Refugees continue to increase in number, especially since the drastic
shift in the fighting of 1995, when the Burmese military found support
of the Chinese government. Since which time, the Karens have lost
their headquarters and many strongholds besides. The Karens retreating,
now face the very real prospect of total destruction. |
| Conscious their colossal struggle of resistance
might vanish in world history, Yuzo is ever spurred on. But he has
found it a road of frustration. Whereas Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechen, Cambodia,
Uganda, Northern Ireland and countless other regions of embittered
struggle have at least received world-wide attention, the 5 million
Karens remain largely ignored by the world media. Still, and perhaps
even more so, Yuzo feels it his mission to tell the story, if not
through the written word, then at least through the visual word of
photography. Believing, as he does, their years of bitter struggle,
not only in the fighting itself, but also in the inevitable social
upheaval, not least of which is the suffering caused from a variety
of endemic diseases, is a truth deserving attention. Perhaps the greater
crime is that to date, by and large, it hasn't received an ear. As
John Pilger recently said "they deserve more than our complicity and
silence". |
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