Kit teaching

KIT BRADFORD:
A dogmatist is someone who has one ideology and follows it all the time.

00.00.00.00

Demontsrations

MATT CONWAY:
Kit Bradfordteaches in a real blackboard jungle, and for her and her students, this isn't dry political theory, it's a life and death struggle for freedom.

Burma is known as 'The Golden Land', one of the most bountiful countries in Asia, but one of the most destitute when it comes to human rights. A decade ago state troops killed thousands of civilians who opposed Burma's oppressive socialist rulers...students spilling into the streets to lead the cry for democracy. The army seized control, renamed the country Myanmar, and closed down the universities. A little knowledge, the junta decided, was a dangerous thing.

The regime routinely tortures and kills its opponents, driving student rebels into refugee camps like this one on the Burmese/Thai border, home for the last two years to an eccentric New Zealander.

Kit carrying water

KIT:
Politically two labels I don't mind taking on are anarchist and feminist. Also I'm happy to identify myself with the McGillicuddy Serious Party, so absurdist, and I guess now, revolutionary.

01.24

MATT:
Kit was something of a wild child growing up in Wellington. By the age of five she'd been expelled from kindergarten and ballet school, but at 29, she's now a rebel with a cause, a cause she shared with New Zealand film-maker Phill Prendeville.

01.44

Kit carrying baby

KIT:
I've certainly got in trouble with various people for being too outspoken and too opinionated. Then again there are other people who hink appreciate that, I hope appreciate that. Hasn't stopped me from hooking a husband.

02.03

Photos of Kit

MATT:
Kit met Mee Oo, nicknamed Snake, and his band of Burmese Freedom Fighters after travelling to the border villages in search of a Kiwi friend. They fell in love and in January were married. Kit teaches English and politics to the student rebels and Snake, in turn, is her interpreter. But when asked whether it was love at first sight, he played the bashful schoolboy.

02.23

Mee Oo

MEE OO:
It is very difficult to explain. Not too much. Maybe...

02.59

Washing

KIT:
Oy watch it. Yes he found me very attractive.

I'm far more opinionated, outspoken than most Burmese wives, and I refuse adamantly to wash his clothes...and I can't cook.

Cooking / eating

MATT:
A homecoming for student soldiers back from the front-line. Others will soon leave to defend their people from persecution by the Burmese Army.

As Camp Adjutant, in charge of supplies, Snake doesn't cross the border to the civil war.

The Salween River marks the border between Burma and Thailand. On its banks is base camp for the ABSDF - the All Burma Student Democratic Front.

Crossing back to the battle front with his men...Thien San, Battalion Commander and best man at Kit's wedding. He's impressed by her commitment to the students' cause.

03.37

Thein San intv

THIEN SAN:
She is not the same as other Western women. No, she want to try democracy with us. Very strange for us. I like her very much...Kit, New Zealand woman.

04.28

Aung San Suu Kyi at rally

MATT:
If Kit ever needed a role model, she's to be found in the person of Aung San Suu Kyi, a woman of acknowledged grace and intelligence who inspires a devoted following in Burma. The Nobel Peace Laureate, who like Ghandi advocates passive resistance, is the daughter of assassinated General Aung San, instrumental in liberating Burma from British rule fifty years ago.

The top brass today frowns at talk of political freedom, freedom which came tantalising close in 1990 when Aung San Suu Kyi led the National League for Democracy to a crushing election win, only for the generals to ignore the result and put her under house arrest. But she refuses to stay silent.

04.47

Aung San Suu Kyi

AUNG SAN SUU KYI:
I don't like to think of it as defiant...I like to think of it as courage.

05.38

MATT:
Although released after seven years, Burma's rightful leader remains under strict surveillance. Thirty-seven of her elected M.P.'s are among more than 1200 political prisoners still behind bars. But they will not surrender.

05.44

KIT:
The situation here is really black and white, there's no ambiguity about it. These people are good, the Burmese Government is bad. It's a really simplistic analysis, but that's what's happening. It's quite difficult for someone like me, and a lot of other people, to come into a situation like this and just walk away from it.

06.05

Preparations for patrol

MATT:
The students make final preparations before going on patrol.

06.38

Thien San intv

THIEN SAN:
They abuse extremely human rights on our people. They can give atrocity to our people. They can do easily do rape the women. They can rob their belongings...they can beat...they can torture. We must defend ourself. If we don't hold arms we cannot catch movement in the front-lines. Burma Army kill easily to our people. No we are not fighting the army of Burma. We are fighting only military dictatorship and evil social system.

06.46

Tank Boy

TANK BOY:
I saw the soldiers gang rape women many times. If they tried to run away, they shot them.

07.34

Tay Lin Ou kick boxing

MATT:
Tay Lin Ou, or Tank Boy, knows all about the evils of the Burmese military. Conscripted at 15, he was forced into an army uniform and witnessed widespread atrocities. He escaped and defected to the students' army. It's Tank Boy's last night before heading back to the war zone, time enough for a last waltz.

07.46

TANK BOY:
I have no fear. I am fighting for my people. I will die for my people.

08.24

KIT:
I'm actually really lucky that none of my particularly close friends have been killed. But I guess it's sort of one of these things that you have to accept. I'm always astounded by the people here and the way they've just become accustomed to that. A lot of women have had husbands who haven't come back and you don't really see them sitting around moping so much. They just get on with their lives. They raise their children.

09.12

Knitting

MATT:
Some of these children will never know their fathers. Within the Student Democratic Front, there's an increasing realisation that armed resistance isn't working. Today the new philosophy is to pursue peace through international pressure. For the families though, day-to-day survival is hard enough.

Those without money survive only on rice shipped to them by international aid workers. Their refugee camp is without electricity or running water, and is rife with malaria and other tropical diseases. For many trapped here, it wasn't meant to be like this.

09.44

KIT:
A lot of them come from middle class backgrounds. They were university students. By rights now a lot of them would be academics: doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers. We've got a bit of a problem here...keep going.

10.31

MATT:
Thai soldiers have arrived, putting Kit on edge...

10.49

KIT:
A group of Thai soldiers has just appeared from behind the camera and I'm not quite sure what's going to happen next. At any given time we might have to pack up our bags and go. They went in to discuss what on earth this foreigner was doing in the camp. I thought it appropriate to take them a plate of biscuits. I get paranoid that any information they get about me will end up in a file somewhere in Thai Intelligence Headquarters and possibly passed on to Burmese Intelligence Headquarters. They have also been known to exert pressure on the Thais to get rid of anybody who might be causing them problems. But I hope it will be OK.

11.01

Listening to radio

MATT:
Despite the hardship, there are indulgences from the world she left behind. A transistor radio brings bulletins from the BBC World Service. Glossy magazines give her friends a glimpse of a foreign culture.

11.54

Reading magazines

KIT:
The negative consequences of my presence here are probably along the lines of making people more envious of western society. I like to think that I provide an example of a liberated woman if anyone wants one, I mean I'm not sure how useful that is.

12.15

Aung San Suu Kyi

MATT:
Right now, the most useful thing Aung San Suu Kyi can do is inspire Burma's 45 million people in their struggle for democracy.

12.39

AUNG SAN SUU KYI:
Nothing comes free in this life. You have to pay for everything in some form or the other, and they've got to understand that they're not going to get their democratic rights just like that. Nobody's going to serve it to them on a plate. They've got to work for it. They've got to make sacrifices for it.

12.49

Demonstrations

MATT:
There's already been so much sacrifice. Thousands killed, thousands more raped, tortured, burnt out of their homes and forced into labour. Another recent student uprising crushed - all this while the military junta seduces foreign investors.

13.11

THIEN SAN:
Military dictatorship want to hold power only. They see in their eyes, they understand in their brains to hold power. They ignore the future life of Burma and Burmese people.

13.35

SINGING:
"Give me land, lotsa land under starry skies...don't fence me in..

14.05

KIT:
I imagine at some stage somebody's going to come here and interrogate me more thoroughly as to exactly who I am and what I'm doing here. And like I said before I hope they'll just, I hope they'll be sympathetic to the idea that Mee Oo is my husband and he can't live outside the camp so I have to live inside.

14.14

Rain

MATT:
The cleansing rains of the monsoon bring the hope for renewal: the hope that one day soon the children of Burma will dance under the umbrella of freedom.

14.43

ENDS

15.04