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people rose up against their military government. The unarmed
demonstrators were cut down, leaving more than 5,000 people dead. 'Under
the Dragon' recounts my journey through Burma some ten years later, meeting
the victims - and the perpetrators - of that uprising. At its heart are
the stories of four remarkable women, and it's around them that the book
revolves: a girl named Ni Ni, born with remarkably sensitive hands who -
after her father vanished - was trapped into prostitution; Ma Swe, a
reluctant government censor; Nan Si Si, the lover of a Karen fighter and
mother of a thuggish hill-tribe warlord; and Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel
Peace laureate and elected leader, held under virtual house arrest for
almost a decade.
When I met Aung San Suu Kyi she told me that, as a visitor, I would not
have seen the fear in her country. 'I have sensed it,' I replied. 'I've
seen a great deal of personal courage.' In a light voice, controlled by
thoughtful directed speech, Suu Kyi said, 'That is what we must do; maximise courage, minimise fear.' Behind her
an NLD - National League for Democracy - supporter wore a T-shirt which
read 'Fear is a habit; I am not afraid'. I didn't ask Aung San Suu Kyi
any probing questions. I didn't ask about her clarity or her faith. I
didn't quizz her on years of imprisonment, into the aching isolation from her sons and her husband, then still alive. The
questions had all been asked before. Instead I told her what I had seen;
that the people needed her, that they felt her love protected them, even
if she might not be able to free them, that she was the embodiment of
their hope. She knew all this of course, though was too courteous to
say, but it was all that I had to offer.
'Concepts such as
truth, justice, compassion,' she once wrote, 'are often the only
bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.' Her determined eyes were
set in a slim, delicate face. 'We will get there in the end,' she told
me, 'but it will take time.'
'Under the Dragon' went to six editions in hardback, won an Arts Council
Writers' Award and, like 'Stalin's Nose', was short listed for the
Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Prize.
'Under the Dragon' is now republished with a new preface by William Dalrymple.
'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
Click below to view Tony Birtley's shocking and graphic Al Jazeera report on the October 2007 protests and crackdown in Rangoon (twelve minutes duration).
'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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