Burma Media Event

Once while liv­ing in Burma (now Myanmar), Goran Simic and his brother, whose father was the Serbian ambas­sador, were stopped by rebels on their way to the inter­na­tional school in Yangon. They were hauled out of their diplo­matic Mercedes lim­ou­sine and forced at gun­point to wit­ness the behead­ing, at the side of the road, of a uni­formed Myanmar gov­ern­ment offi­cial. “Look,” said the rebels to the boys, and prod­ded them with their rifles. “Watch.” Standing nearby were two pho­tog­ra­phers and a video cam­era­man, who were record­ing the behead­ing. When it was over, the rebels took the rolls of film from the cam­eras and the tape from the video cam­era and pressed them into the boys’ hands. “Take them. Show the world!” the rebels shouted. “Show what we are doing.” The rebels herded the broth­ers back into their lim­ou­sine and told the dri­ver, who had been watch­ing from his seat, to drive on. Then the rebels sped off. 

When Goran and his brother got to school, they gave the films and video to their teacher. They never learned what hap­pened to them. Years later, in the Media and Communications Studies class, Goran won­dered whether the inci­dent that he and his brother had wit­nessed might be called a media event. He could see, after tak­ing the class, that it may have been one, but when it was hap­pen­ing he hadn’t thought of it that way.