“I got tattooed 60 years ago. In those days, Chin women had their faces tattooed in order to appear ugly to outsiders, to the Burmese and to the Japanese, to avoid getting abducted and raped. But we also considered our tattoos to be beautiful. With independence, the Burmese no longer allowed us to get tattooed. We were punished if we put marks on our faces because they wanted to make us Burmese,” sums up Ma Aung Seim, a seventy-one year old Chin woman.
Today, few members of Burma’s 130 ethnic minorities still wear tribal tattoos. Following suppression from British colonisers and missionaries until independence in 1948, and the heavy hand of the Burmese military since the 1960s, the tradition is about to fade away into the opaque realms of history. The tattoos of the Chin women of northern Rakhine state are amongst the last visible traditions of a once unique cultural identity.
In 2012, I travelled to northeast Burma, beyond the main tourist spots of Yangon, Bagan, Mandalay and Inle to Rakhine State, on the border with Bangladesh and just south of Chin State. During that humid summer, Sittwe, the state capital of Rakhine, repeatedly exploded in racist pogroms by the Buddhist majority against the Muslim Rohingya minority. Hundreds were killed, raped and tortured, mosques and townships were wiped out and tens of thousands of people were displaced. But this was only the start of Burma slipping back into a heart of darkness of Conradian proportions. Despite Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s election victory in 2015, which raised hopes for a peaceful democratic transition, many ethnic minorities remain at war with the Burmese government and some 800.000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh in 2017, following a campaign of terror, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide by the Tatmadaw, the country’s military, supported by much of the population and Aung San Suu Kyi’s ruling party. After a half century of military rule, an angry nationalist people used its newfound freedom of expression against a tiny minority. In many ways, this was nothing new. Violent and ruthless assimilation of some of Burma’s 130 minorities had already been practised by the British and the Burmese military for two centuries.
Apart from the unfolding catastrophe of the Rohingya, numerous other conflicts along the country’s fringes, between the dominant Bamar who make up some 69% of the population, and ethnic factions, continue. The reasons for these conflicts, also known as the world’s longest running civil war, are complex and go beyond racism by the dominant ethnic group – access to natural resources and their exploitation also play important roles.
So what, you may ask, has all this to do with tattoos? At the very heart of the Burmese conundrum lies ethnic identity. And ethnic identity has defined the history of tattooing in Burma. Chinese records from the Qin dynasty (221-206 BC) mention the tattoos of the Lue and Yue minorities in the Mekong region. These communities tattooed themselves to ward off evil spirits. They adorned their legs with demons and snakes, perhaps the Naga of Sanskrit origin, which is a potent symbol not just amongst Hindus, but Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists as well. In the 6th century, Brahmin priests, fearful that Buddhism might wipe out Hinduism on the Indian subcontinent, sent emissaries to Southeast Asia who brought Yant with them - magic diagrams used for meditation, usually drawn or carved onto wood, metal or cloth. At some point, these Yant made the transition to the human skin. Neighboring Thailand has experienced a huge resurgence in this tattoo tradition, called Sak Yant, in recent years.
In Burma, the Shan minority appear to be the first community who took up tattooing, likely thanks to influences from both southern China and the Indian subcontinent. Like the Lue and Yue, the Shan tattooed themselves predominantly below the waist. The local shaman would also be the resident tattooist, who applied the sacred patterns using a long needle made from wood, along with natural inks. Often the adherents would zone out on opium to reduce the pain of the ritual which could involve many sessions over a long period of time. Buddhism has been around Burma since at least the third century and Theravada Buddhism has been the dominant religion since the 11th century, having gradually replaced various animist beliefs. According to Buddhist belief, the human body is divided into twelve parts and specific sacred tattoos were applied to specific areas of the body. Hindu gods, Buddhist figures, mantras and diagrams belonged on the back, the arms and the head. Mythological creatures and animals at home in the Himavanta, the forest at the foot of Mount Meru in Hindu mythology, graced shoulders, throats and ears. Peacocks and geckos in the waist area afforded sexual strength, while ankle tattoos protected its wearers from snake bites.
Between the 14th and 17th century, the Shan passed tattooing on to the Bamar. Different tattoo traditions flourished among Myanmar’s other ethnic groups. But the British, keen to create a national colonial identity, suppressed tattooing. George Orwell, who served in colonial Burma as a policeman was himself tattooed, apparently in defiance of what he perceived as an exploitative regime. Following independence, the dominant Bamar brutally suppressed other ethnicities to bring them in line with their idea of common national identity. By now weaned off tattooing, they made minority tattoos illegal.
After an eight hour rain-drenched boat journey up the Kaladan River, I reached Mrauk-U, a place almost too wondrous and beautiful for words. The remnants of the ancient Arakan capital, which ruled the region between the 15th and 18th century, stood amongst the village homes and in paddy fields. But was not as peaceful as it first looked. In the hills around Mrauk-U, the military had set up patrols. Around the ancient moss-covered chedis that poked out of the dense vegetation, men with heavy weapons cowered in the grass, on the look-out for ‘terrorists’, a euphemism for the unpopular local minority – the Muslims. The military was popular here, despite having suppressed the people of Rakhine for decades. Their divide and conquer strategy was paying off in the new, free Burma, where people were frustrated and were looking for scapegoats. “They are keeping the town safe, in case of a Rohingya attack,’ I am told by local tour guide Michael,
Chin State was only a few hours travel away and I escaped the heavy atmosphere to head north with a couple of Americans. The Chin people are of Tibeto-Burman ancestry. To this day, some people here are animists, despite British missionary efforts and the heavy hand of the Burmese which has caused many locals to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh and India. We jumped on a rickety boat and headed up the Lemro River. Dilapidated villages lined the eroding riverbanks where naked kids stood and stared at us in wonder and horror while women washed themselves and the rags they wore in the muddy water.
A few hours up river, we reached two Chin villages. These communities were not happy places. While the Burmese successfully assimilated the locals to become Buddhists, they did not introduce health care or electricity. Nor has the government bothered in the seventy years since independence. The first young woman I met had an ovarian infection and no money to journey south to see a doctor. One of the Americans I traveled with was a doctor and operated the girl there and then with barely any equipment or pain killers. Clearly I had reached some kind of frontier. Many of the older women had face tattoos which brought a modest flow of tourist dollars. Ma Aung Seim told me, ‘I feel ashamed to have tattoos. I want to be Burmese. I was tattooed when I was ten years old. All I remember is the pain.” The fading geometric patterns have almost melted into the deep lines of her face.
Michael told me that the tattoos have no religious significance. “These women were all tattooed to make them uglier so the chance of kidnapping by the former elite of the Arakan kings and by the Japanese during WWII was smaller. The Japanese wanted to use these ladies as comfort women, but the tattoos put them off.” This story has been kicked around Burma in one form or another for eons: A Burmese king married a beautiful Chin lady and took her home to his palace. But his bride was unhappy with her new life and escaped. To foil her pursuers she carved lines into her face with a knife. This allegedly led to the traditions whose demise I was witnessing now. But there is more to it than this. In the past the women of each community would wear distinct tattoo designs. Pa Mae covered the whole face including the ears and eyelids. Pa Pyouk covered the face with black spots. Pa Khyaung involved the carving of eight lines across each cheek. Pa Kyar was identifiable by four lines and four dots on the cheeks while Pa Wine mixed circles and lines.
Sadly, the old ways have been forgotten. The Chin women barely remembered anything about the significance of the incredible markings on their faces. Ma Aung Seim commented, “The tattooists are long dead. Our children and grand children think it’s silly. They want to be modern. We are the last. When we die, the tradition will die with us.” But clearly, despite her vocal misgivings, she and her friends were quietly proud of their tattoos. “In the past, girls with face tattoos were considered beautiful.” The contradiction the chin women experienced between once seeing themselves beautiful and now defining their markings as ugly stemmed from government repression – punishment for getting tattooed tattoos included losing livestock to the state, and this law remains in place to this day – which goes some way to explain the public denial of their culture.
Text and photos: Tom Vater
In each village a handful of families lived in simple bamboo and rattan huts on stilts, the undersides populated by chicken and pigs and sick looking, undernourished children. The school was a ramshackle barn with holes in the floor large enough to swallow a child. The teacher was a teenager who had failed his teaching test twice. He shouted at the children, aged between five and ten, and all of them Chin, in Burmese. They shouted right back at him. By the time they grow up, there will be little left of their culture. Asked about the changes modernity was bringing, Ma Aung Seim told us that further up river thousands of Chinese workers were building a dam. I felt like I was too late, the moment for these people had passed, they were being assimilated without opportunity. Their tattoos speak to us of a past almost forgotten, and certainly suppressed. Back in Yangon I met Jerry, tattooist and owner of Jerry Ink, a local tattoo studio. He was half Chin and was planning to visit Chin State to research his ancestors’ tattoo traditions. “Tattooing is incredibly popular amongst young Burmese. I hope I will find some traces of old traditions in my home state. I want to reintroduce the Burmese to our common past.” He will have to hurry.
