Burma: Seeing the Political Prisoners
Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 7:24
The Guardian of London highlights Even Though I'm Free, I'm Not, an exhibition by James MacKay, of the portraits of former Burma's political prisoners, almost all photographed in exile from Thailand to Britain to Norway.
The exhibition can be seen on-line at Enigma Images' website.
Two years ago Aye Min Soe was known the world over, star of Oscar-nominated documentary Burma VJ, the shot-in-secret story of Burma's 2007 Saffron Revolution. Today, the former political prisoner leads an anonymous existence, stateless, penniless and vulnerable, on the Thai-Burma border. Mired between UN and Thai government bureaucracy, his application for refugee status has stalled. He has no documentation allowing him to be in Thailand, he cannot work, and is regularly threatened with deportation back to Burma.
"If I was sent back to Burma, I would be arrested and jailed straight away. I might be killed. I thought I would be free when I escaped from my country, but I am not. I feel I am still in prison."