Now that I have been here a full week — long for some, not long enough for others — I feel able at least to try to describe how different it feels, the high level political changes that have brought a wave of optimism (albeit still cautious) among people here.
Travelling around Yangon I have the stranger's privilege, and patience, to talk to anyone who will talk to me. In the past this was not that many people, but on this trip I have not been able to stop people talking! In taxis, drivers talk in wide-eyed admiration about Aung San Suu Kyi — whose face can be seen everywhere on the front of newspapers and on posters and T-shirts — asking me if I have met her and what I think about her.
At an evening meeting where a Karen academic (from a US University) gave a paper of her research findings on coping strategies of the poor, I met members of two Burmese CBOs working on 'human rights' who asked me if I could help them get books and publications from Thai groups about human rights and development. That really threw me. In a public meeting, to have Burmese in Yangon to ask me about human rights was just incredible!
Probably most astonishing of all though is the press freedom. Internet sites are no longer blocked and reading Burmese language newspapers here now is not unlike reading the pamphlets and newsletters that used to be produced by Burmese exiles on the Thai border in the early 1990s — full of opinion pieces about politics, local and international. While all papers carry some coverage of economic summits, the trips to China by government officials and internal economic developments that fill the government-controlled press, independent newspapers carry these stories with a critical eye.
There is especially a growing environmental awareness, partly spurred on by the alarm at the changes in the weather and the impact rising river temperatures is having on fisheries. Newspapers are a critical part of developing civil society, providing the information necessary for public debates on critical issues that need to be brought into the open. It seems there is a very active debate taking place in these newspapers, open to everyone who have access to Burmese papers.
But the sad truth is that is not many people in the country. Aside from the fact that the papers are not cheap (2000