The Himalayan foothills of northern Myanmar form the ancestral homeland of the Kachins, an ethnic group that has endured decades of brutal repression at the hands of the Burmese military. Starting in 1962, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) waged a low-grade insurgency against the Burmese military.
Kachin Independence Organization Featured In The New York Times
Published May 10, 2009
Tim Patterson, for the Pulitzer Center (Photo by Ryan Libre)
A feature article on the Kachin struggle for freedom is the headline on nytimes.com right now.
I wish I could claim authorship, but credit goes to the excellent reporter Thomas Fuller, who visited several places controlled by the KIO /KIA and, to my mind, got the story dead right.
Here's the link:
Ethnic Groups In Myanmar Want Peace But Gird For A War
In case you missed it, here's my feature on the Kachin independence movement that appeared in The Washington Times a few months ago.
Christians Gird For War In Myanmar
(for the record, even though most Kachins are Baptist, I like the NY Times headline better...)
Pulitzer Center grantee Ryan Libre received the Eugene Smith, Howard Chapnick Grant to open Documentary Arts Asia (DAA) center and library in Chiangmai, Thailand.
Ryan Libre receives the 2010 Nikon Inspiration Award for photographs on the Kachin struggle for independence in Myanmar.
Grantee
Ryan Libre is a photojournalist based in a small village near Chiang Mai, Thailand who tells stories of places and people that fall below the radar screen of mainstream media. Past projects include...
Grantee
Tim Patterson is a travel journalist based in Vermont whose work has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Worldhum.com and the Common Language Project. Tim is also a contributing editor...
