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At least 8 people were killed and nearly a hundred injured in Burma late last week during celebrations for the Spring-time Water Festival. The violence is being attributed by the military junta to “terrorists” and could affect the general elections planned for next year. An Amnesty International Spokesperson speculated that “it’s not beyond the realm of possibility … that the government is behind this.” The elections were widely seen as a strategy by military junta leader General Than Shwe to exit the political stage only to wield power behind the scenes. But the junta may call off the elections if it fears it is losing control of the process. The landslide winner of the last general election in 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi is under house arrest in the capital Rangoon. Burma’s new election law forbids participation by any politicians who have been detained, and Suu Kyi’s party, the National League of Democracy (NLD) is boycotting the new round of elections. As if to put more pressure on the junta’s rigid hold on power, HBO is now airing Burma VJ, a new Academy-award nominated documentary which sheds light on the 40-year old military regime’s brutality in suppressing the September 2007 democratic protests led by Buddhist monks and ordinary citizens. Burma VJ centers on the Democratic Voice of Burma, a collection of video journalists who recorded the democratic uprising in 2007 by shooting daily footage and smuggling it out of the country via courier or internet upload. The video journalists, or VJs, had to dodge police, informers, and undercover intelligence agents to obtain the footage. The DVB then beamed the footage back onto Burmese t.v. from its headquarters in Oslo, Norway.

GUEST: Aye Chan Niang, Executive Director of the Democratic Voice of Burma

HBO playdates: April 24 (3:15 p.m.), 27 (1:00 p.m.) and 30 (4:00 p.m.), and May 2 (11:00 a.m., 5:25 a.m.), 6 (10:00 a.m.) and 12 (12:30 a.m.)
HBO2 playdates: April 28 (8:00 p.m.) and May 8 (noon) and 18 (noon)