Summary

The following is a summary of the September 23, 2008, event "Reading Burma: A Benefit for Cyclone Relief and Freedom of Expression in Burma/Myanmar," co-sponsored by the Pen American Center, the Open Society Institute, and The New York Review of Books.

Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, Kiran Desai, Siri Hustvedt, Joseph Lelyveld, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, and George Packer shared the stage of the Great Hall of Cooper Union with the Venerable U Gawsita, one of the leaders of last year’s “Saffron Revolution,” and more than a dozen other monks as PEN American Center paid tribute to the thousands of writers, monks, and ordinary Burmese citizens who have risked their lives to further freedom of expression in Burma.

"Reading Burma: A Benefit for Cyclone Relief and Freedom of Expression in Burma/Myanmar" brought last year’s brutal crackdown and the military regime’s mismanagement of the response to Cyclone Nargis earlier this year to life through a series of readings, images, and a moving on-stage interview. More than 650 people attended the event, which raised over $13,500 for the International Burmese Monks Organization, a network of Buddhist monks distributing relief aid to the victims of Cyclone Nargis.

Maureen Aung-Thwin, who directs the Open Society Institute’s Burma Project—which co-sponsored the program together with the New York Review of Books—denounced a wave of cyber-attacks earlier this week against leading exile news and information websites, and paid tribute to the monks and nuns of Burma, who “were the first—and in many places the only—responders for over two million victims of the cyclone,” and who “continue to be hounded, jailed, and derobed at will.”

The essential role Burma’s Buddhist Sangha, or monastic community, plays as a pillar of civil society was highlighted throughout the evening. After a brief film with stirring scenes from last year’s Sangha-led peaceful demonstrations and harrowing footage of the government’s violent crackdown, author and New Yorker staff writer George Packer sat down with the Venerable U Gawsita, one of the leaders of those protests.

Soft-spoken and regal, the monk told Packer that the protest marches had been designed to urge the government into dialogue with a population suffering from a five-fold increase in fuel prices, and that they had been carried out with the full awareness that there was a grave risk of a violent response. His monastery, which also runs an AIDS hospice in defiance of the government, was attacked by soldiers and he and a number of other monks were severely beaten.

"Reading Burma" also illuminated the mechanisms of the regime’s heavy-handed and far-reaching censorship and its propaganda machinery, and paid tribute to the writers and journalists who have refused to be silenced. Author and former New York Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld read works that had been crafted to elude the government’s “Scrutiny Board,” including a poem by leading poet Saw Wei entitled “February Fourteenth.”

In one pointed and poignant exchange, novelist Kiran Desai and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk traded accounts of Cyclone Nargis and its aftermath from eyewitness reports and from the official media. Novelist Siri Hustvedt gave voice to leading poet and comedian Zargana (Maung Thura), who was arrested on June 4, 2008, after mobilizing more than 400 leading entertainers to deliver cyclone relief and criticizing the government’s effort in the international press.

One of the evening’s most emotional moments came when Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar, recounted his very personal meetings with 79-year-old poet and journalist U Win Tin, who was serving a 20-year sentence in the infamous Insein prison.

Salman Rushdie invited the evening’s special guests, 15 saffron-robed Burmese monks, onstage to close the evening. The monks, several of whom had been imprisoned in Burma, delivered the traditional Metta Sutta chant of loving kindness, as they had throughout the demonstrations that took place in Burma last year—a powerful reminder of the courage of all who have continued to raise their voices for peaceful change in Burma.