Last March, I travelled to Burma’s new capital, Nay Pyi Daw. I was among a handful of journalists to be invited to the junta’s annual military parade. It was the first time that the outside world had been granted a glimpse of the city the generals have built. Dumped in the middle of malarial scrubland, some 300 miles north of Rangoon, it is a strange, gleaming confection of official hotels, ministries and government housing set in the baking plains of central Burma (now called Myanmar). The junta has spent billions building this largely empty metropolis—whose name means “Seat of Kings.”
Here, the generals sit in perfect isolation while the rest of the country suffers. Spending on healthcare is, according to the UN, the lowest in the world. Poverty is widespread and a third of children under five are malnourished. Military spending, though, has rocketed. Despite chronic power shortages, leaving much of the country in almost permanent blackout, the junta’s new capital gleams with 24-hour electricity.
When I first arrived in the old capital, Rangoon, on a photographic assignment in 1995, I expected steel helmets and fixed bayonets at every street corner and endless checkpoints—all the sights one associates with military dictatorships. Instead I found a bustling metropolis of colourful markets, packed restaurants and gleaming pagodas. Street hawkers were selling old copies of Life magazine and monks browsed the book stalls next to tea shops. The Burmese army was conspicuous by its absence. I had to “steal” images of soldiers I did see, and often they would hold their hands in front of my lens to stop me. Now, here in Nay Pyi Daw, I was surrounded by thousands of them. And I was permitted to photograph at will.
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