Journey into unseen Burma: Peter Popham and photographer Chris Steele-Perkins are among first foreign visitors to Chin State for 50 years

by Guest Sat May 03, 2014 6:58 am

The place we are heading to is one of the wildest and least-known corners of south-east Asia. Chin State, high in the mountains between Burma and India, is home to the eponymous Chin, wild mountain men who for centuries hung their huts with their enemies' heads, sacrificed animals to evil spirits, worshipped a Supreme Being called Khawzing, and raided lowland Burman villages to steal babies to be raised as slaves.

For centuries, the Chin shared the country that came to be known as Burma with the dominant Burmans in the plains, as well as with dozens of other minorities that made their homes in the mountains that fringe the lowlands. The Chins' legends reveal that they were in no doubt of their humble status in the Burmese scheme of things, brought about by lowland cunning.
All the world's races, goes their creation story, were born from 101 eggs; the Chin were born from the last egg of all, and as a result were the most beloved of their parents. But by the time they emerged, all the desirable parts of the world had already been apportioned out; all that was left for them was the mountains. Additionally, the Burmese man who was supposed to be their guardian cheated them out of the possession of elephants – a Burmese symbol of royalty; and when the time came for lessons in reading and writing, he cheated them again by showing them only the blank side of the slate, so they never learnt a single letter.
Today, the Chin have left their savage past long behind, and thanks to Christian missionaries, they are also literate. But in the process, they have been deposited in a kind of ethnic limbo: Christians in an overwhelmingly Buddhist land, Burmese citizens who feel neither Burmese nor anything else. A century ago, they were unrivalled hunters in the dense forests through which they wandered; today, the hills are denuded, the tigers and bears and deer are long gone; hunters with locally-made guns still march out into what remains of the woods, but the odd wild pig is the best they can hope to bring home. And the plight of the Chin is that of those hunters writ large: locked in a land which is as much their prison as their paradise.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/journey-into-unseen-burma-peter-popham-and-photographer-chris-steeleperkins-are-among-first-foreign-visitors-to-chin-state-for-50-years-9314058.html