The sun shines its last rays on the suburbs of Mae Sot, in Thailand, not far from the Burmese border. In the street, the stray dogs are sleeping, crushed by the heat, undisturbed by the dance of the mopeds which backfire and zigzag on the tarred road which crosses the district. It is here, in a wooden house on stilts, behind a few coconut trees, that self-taught Burmese artist Maung Phoe – his painter name –, his wife, Zar, and their 16-year-old son have found some respite.
Anonymous, they now live far from the civil war in Burma, a country torn apart since the coup d’etat by the soldiers who regained power a little over two years ago. Arrested and accused by the junta of carrying out revolutionary political activities, the 50-year-old and his wife spent six months in the dreaded Insein prison, in Yangon, the former Burmese capital.
Upstairs, sitting on the floor of the only empty room in their house, Maung Phoe gently turns the plastic sleeves of the green binder in which he keeps the treasures exfiltrated from his cell. Inside, drawings, notes, tiny sketches in blue ballpoint pen, which he made clandestinely during his detention. Portraits and scenes of life sketched on the smallest piece of paper, packet of coffee or packaging of instant noodles, piece of cardboard, back of draft prison administration reports.
So many fragile and forbidden traces that forced him to flee his country in the spring of 2022. Today, Maung Phoe’s drawings form a rare and precious testimony, a chronicle of the trying conditions of detention of those who defy the Burmese junta. The latter announced on May 3, on the occasion of a Buddhist festival, the release of 2,000 prisoners sentenced for dissent. But around 20,000 opponents are still locked up.
End of the democratic parenthesis
On a yellowed sheet with visible folds, silhouettes of men lying head to head are aligned in four rows. Jumble of bodies and tissues. “There, these are the first days, Maung Phoe says softly. We were huddled together, glued to each other, in the heat and humidity. Four hundred and seventy detainees for a room that could hold one hundred and fifty. After about ten days, some of us were transferred to the old prison meditation center, transformed into a jail. » Because, at the start of the “Burmese spring”, in 2021, the regime is arresting opponents with a vengeance and places in prison are running out.
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