Foreign Correspondent: Orphans of the Storm

Here’s an episode of Foreign Correspondent that sounds like a prime candidate for Logie and Walkley Award nominations.

Following 2008 Cyclone Nargis in Burma, foreign journalists were banned and even local camera crews risked jail filming in the disaster.

Cyclone Nargis brought unparalleled devastation to Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta leaving thousands dead, and millions displaced and homeless. This week the ABC screens the footage of the survivors, with tens of thousands of children alone traumatised and torn from their homes and families. To capture these stories, Burmese camera crews took an extraordinary risk – facing jail terms of up to 30 years if caught.

In Burma, life within a conventional family setting is hard enough.

What happens when that family disintegrates and children are left to fend for themselves? That was one of the many dreadful consequences of this natural disaster but how could the world learn of the scale and circumstance of it while the official lid was screwed down tight on this highly secretive country.

Young or old, little help reached the victims – despite pleas by international aid agencies access to the disaster zone was limited and inadequate. In the early, critically important days and weeks following the devastation international supply ships were waiting offshore with help – only to be turned away by the regime.

The generals of the junta insisted that they were in control and were caring for their people but no one knew for sure. Deeply suspicious of the international media they tightened the controls even more.

Armed with small cameras and quickly schooled in basic production techniques, a team of Burmese cameramen fanned out across the Delta where – for a year – they filmed the remarkable and moving stories of some of the children orphaned by Nargis and doing their very best to get by.

The stories they recorded and smuggled out reveal the continuing plight of the most vulnerable victims of both natural disaster and regime indifference – the children.

But they also reveal the resilience and determination of young children exemplified by 10 year old Yeh Pyint. He’s now father and mother to his 6 year old sister and 3 year old brother. He carts water house to house to survive. His strength and determination to survive and overcome adversity is intensely moving and inspirational.

“Orphans of the Storm” airs in Foreign Corresponent, 8pm Tuesday on ABC1.