Capturing Atrocities

“It's not just capturing what's happening in front of you or just pressing the shutter button. When you see all this suffering, atrocities, tragedy, and the brutal crackdowns, it's really important to get a picture that symbolizes the event that happened.”

These are the words of "Moe," a pseudonym for the Burmese photojournalist who has shot some of the most iconic images from the ongoing conflict in Myanmar. In his only interview since the coup broke, he discussed with us on Insight Myanmar Podcast how he became a professional photographer, including past stories he'd covered in Rohingya refugee camps and Kachin jade mines. Amazingly, word has just come out that he was nominated for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Breaking News Photography, "for striking images, conducted at great personal risk, of the military coup in Myanmar." This is a very well-deserved honor, and we hope that it may bring further attention to the continued resistance to the military coup in Myanmar.

Our podcast discussion was as remarkable as it was insightful. Moe took back the curtain and gave the listeners an inside view of how he came to shoot some of the most important images the world has seen of the conflict, discussing his emotional state in doing so as well as his decision to document, rather than participate, in the early protest movement.

Thanks to Moe and people like him, the injustice and inhumanity of the Tatmadaw is not happening in darkness or silence, a sharp contrast to the previous kind of impunity they operated under before the days of Internet, but instead, their daily acts of cruelty are now being witnessed only hours later by the rest of the world. The question remains, now that this such courageous people are risking their lives to report on this information and make it accessible, will the rest of the world respond to stand strongly for the freedom and human rights of the Burmese people?