Padauk: A new generation
Jeanne Hallacy is a human rights activist, journalist, author, and documentarian who has spent decades reporting on Myanmar. And as bad as things might be now, another part of her has never felt so hopeful and optimistic, given the newfound awareness she sees many young Bamar openly expressing. To a large part, that is the subject of her film, Padauk, which tracks the lives and activities of several young protagonists. In the following excerpt, she describes in more detail what she sees taking place within Burmese society, and how she attempted to portray that in her film.
“For the first time ever, I see a much more heightened awareness among the urban sectors of young people.”
“Part of the key message of our film Padauk was to show through the eyes of this young woman, who is an “everywoman,” I mean she's a young woman who grew up in the city, who basically thought the ethnic nationalities were troublemakers. They were perhaps terrorists. They were people that were trying to rock the boat and disrupt the the newfound democracy that the rest of the country was enjoying, who believed that the Rohingya were illegal, and probably had racist sentiments against them.
And this very successful campaign of vitriol and hate speech against the Rohingya was fueled by Facebook, so much so that Facebook has actually been taken to task for its culpability, in the violence that resulted from the use of its portal to target the Rohingya.
So now we're at a point where people like Nat, the storyteller of our film, has her eyes wide open, and is saying, ‘Oh, my gosh, my heart is so full, my heart is brimming over because I realize that I was wrong, that I was duped! I was hypnotized by the hate-filled propaganda of this military to see my sisters and brothers in the Rohingya community, as well as the Kachin, the Shan, the Chin, the Mon, the Karenni, the Karen communities, these are my sisters and brothers.’
And that is what is different now. For the first time ever, I see a much more heightened awareness among the urban sectors of young people. And not just young people, middle-aged people, civil servants. Burma is comprised of over 135 different ethnic nationalities, of which there are 15 major ethnic nationalities, and one of the ethnic nationalities are the Bamar, who we call Burma or Burmese. And they have been awakened! They are now willing to take the hands of their ethnic sisters and brothers, of the Rohingya sisters and brothers and say, ‘We Are One, we are united we are together, and we will end this military rule together.’
That's what's different.”