The Truth Smuggled Out

Than Shwe, then a military intelligence officer, asks Dominic Faulder: “How many times have you been here? Is it two or three?”

He replies, “This is my 13th visit.”

This exchange took place on Dominic’s way to officially interview General Saw Maung, and the military intelligence officer was livid at his answer.

Dominic’s deep connection with Burma began long before he ever set foot there. As a child, he often heard his grandfather mention Rangoon, and the name lingered in his mind. Little did he know at the time that his grandfather had also been a neighbor of Major General Hubert Rance, the last governor of Burma. He certainly did not realize that one day he would develop a deep interest in the very place these two English gentlemen once discussed.

Dominic’s first encounter with Burma was almost accidental. After graduating from university, he traveled to Thailand, intending to tour the country before settling into any serious employment. The city did not appeal to him, and he was ready to leave. But at that moment, his plans took an unexpected turn, as he found himself stuck in Bangkok when a military coup on April 1, 1981, led to a citywide lockdown. During that time, he met a New Zealand journalist who needed a photographer for a trip to Burma to cover the Thingyan festival in Mandalay.

Dominic’s first impression of Burma was surreal. “It was like an aerodrome from the Second World War and a complete bureaucratic mayhem,” he recalls. “Nobody knew what was going on!” This marked the beginning of his many journeys to Burma, and when he went back to Bangkok, his plans changed completely. In short, he realized that Burma was a unique story waiting to be told. “Burma was this huge, forgotten country,” he says. “The British colonial element made it interesting from my perspective and the wonderful scenery and culture were very intoxicating, very absorbing.”

Dominic speaks of  witnessing the aftermath of a massive fire in Mandalay in May 1981, which destroyed a sixth of the city due to black-market fuel storage. He was baffled by how a city of 100,000 could burn to the ground without anyone outside knowing about it. He spoke to a retired policeman working for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), who simply replied, “Yeah, that’s exactly [the kind of thing that] had happened before.” Dominic wondered, “What else were they getting away with?”

Years later, when the first demonstrations in 1988 occurred, Dominic was there. “I’ll never forget this,” he says, “because we got caught at a red light, and suddenly these students appeared from literally nowhere! Hundreds and hundreds of high school students, ordinary students. Then, the flying peacock was unfurled, the great symbol of the Student Union.” He shares that they set off down the road marching into the city. The numbers were just staggering. “My estimate would be at least 10,000 people that came through,” he says. “I have never seen a display of raw courage.” His heart just stopped as he sat in the three-wheeler.

He returned to Myanmar just two days after the military coup led by General Saw Maung in September 1988. While at the airport, he met a British Council official who needed help carrying some antibiotics. As a result, within three hours of landing, he found himself sitting in a room with Aung San Suu Kyi and Michael Aris. That was when Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Rangoon to care for her sick mother before she became involved in politics. He asked her, “‘This might be a slightly sensitive question - is your future in Burma or the UK?’ She replied, ‘I’ve always made it perfectly clear that should my country need me, I will come back to citizens.’ She added, ‘“Why is that such a sensitive question?’ I just remember Michael Aris cringing on the sofa when she said this, because their lives had just changed irrevocably. There was no way that anything was going to be normal again. And she was in for the duration.’”

Dominic also crossed paths with U Nu, who had been overthrown by General Ne Win in the 1962 coup while holding a cabinet meeting in his garden. He recalls how U Nu questioned him persistently about his religion, and comments that “he was obsessed with Buddhism, and it muddled up his politics.”

Another unforgettable encounter was with Min Ko Naing, a highly respected student leader whose nom de guerre can be translated as “Conqueror of Kings.” At that time, Min Ko Naing knew his arrest was imminent and granted Dominic an interview, but first presented a list of demands. “The agreement was the pictures of him with his face unmasked would not be released until he was captured,” Dominic recalls, adding that he could release the masked images of Min Ko Naing in the meantime.

As a journalist, Dominic also wanted to make sure he captured the military’s side of the story. His request to interview General Saw Maung was approved and he was allowed to travel to Yangon. “I remember arriving, and military intelligence had sent my minder to collect me in a little Mazda 323, so I had my own car,” he says. “I went through customs, and I opened the suitcase, and it had more film than anybody had ever seen, more recording equipment, TV, and videos! I’ve got the whole thing covered. All these people looked, and their jaws just dropped. It was so flagrant they’d never seen anything like it.” Yet with official permission, he was allowd to proceed with his interview appointment, a rarity at that time in the very oppressive regime. Yet comparing this incident to the current situation after the 2021 military coup, he reflects, “It was much better [then] than people might have expected. [Now,] just to get the junta to talk, which we can’t do today in 2025-- these people are completely impenetrable.”

Still, being a journalist in Burma was no easy experience back then. Foreigners were restricted to just a week-long visa, which made travel very difficult. “Seven days was our absolute limit! So, if you went in as a traveler, you couldn’t go more than three and a half days from Rangoon; you had to be back, and it was quite a serious issue.”

Given these constraints, he describes how he managed to report on Burma undetected in the early days. “All that surveillance I got off because I never put my name on anything. I was a young kid who didn't look like much of a threat to anything. And I got away with it.” He further recalls smuggling out films and notebooks separately to avoid confiscation at the airport.  

However, it was his second attempt to secure an official interview with the Information Committee about the 1990 election that nearly got him in trouble. “What I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t as much of an interview, as I [had been] expecting,” he says. “It was going to be my show trial!” Before he could begin, Soe Nyunt, the editor of the Working People’s Daily (which is known today as the New Light of Myanmar) had prepared that meeting as the pretext for a trial for him. “What he had to tell me was a four-page denunciation of all my ‘crimes’ as a journalist and my failings and everything,” he says. “He finally got to my punishment, and that was that I had to write an apology and an explanation for my journalistic sins in the Far Eastern Economic Review. Everybody in the room at that point just looked at each other because I didn’t work for the Far Eastern Economic Review!”

Reflecting on the changing times, Dominic reflects on what it means to be a journalist in Myanmar today. “At the end of the day, for most people in the outside world, it’s an incredibly complicated story. It’s somewhere that’s out of sight, and the terrible things that happen in Burma seem to repeat themselves,” he says. “I personally have a problem with journalists who come in and say, ‘This is how a country should be run.’” He continues, “That’s not their job! The job of a journalist is to go in and to get a story as accurately as possible, to explain what they think is going on, and present that in an unvarnished, accessible way to whoever their audience is on television, whatever, that’s the job of a journalist.” To Dominic, the role of a journalist is to inform, not to instruct.

While some people believe that not enough media attention is going towards Burma, Dominic has a different take on the lack of coverage. “This idea that Burma is not getting the attention it gets it deserves because the media are neglecting it; I do not accept that at all! [Burma] is getting the attention. The problem is it’s not being read and it’s not on the agenda.” He points out how the world took notice in 1988, when mass demonstrations made Burma the top global news story. However, he then recalls how this coverage was abruptly overshadowed by the sudden death of General Zia-ul-Haq, the president of Pakistan. He notes, “[Zia-ul-Haq] just wiped the Burma story off. It just disappeared! Burma always misses the boat.” Despite its recent tumultuous history, Dominic believes that things could have turned out very differently for the Golden Land than where it stands now. “Everything you can see about the country is a disaster,” he says sadly. “Yet this should be one of the great success stories of Southeast Asia! It’s got everything for success potentially.”

For Dominic, he feels that those observers who continue to stay involved with Burma commit to being on something of on an emotional roller coaster. There were times he also felt hopelessness, and this led to monitoring his own involvement. “I basically reduced all personal coverage of Burma in the early 90s, because I found it so depressing,” he says. “This story was just so difficult, so inaccessible and slow-moving.” On the other hand, the resilience and spirit of the people has more than animated him. “You see the most amazing things. Go back to the students in ’81 and their passion, their idealism, and just the sheer guts of going up against a security state, and a security apparatus as ruthless as that.”

In closing, like many other past guests who have described their multi-decade relationship with the country, Dominic reflects on the pull that Burma exerts on those who come to be involved with its story. “Foreigners get involved with Southeast Asia and stay much longer than they ever anticipated. But Burma, it is the one story that you always go back to, [asking] what-ifs and why do you think that is?” Yet, no matter the darkness, there is always optimism just around the corner, as Dominic reflects, “[Burma has] always a lot of laughter, even in the most terrible situations.”