Yangon, Burma's capital city. A stone's throw from the tropical islands of Indonesia and the shimmering of Thailand's azure water and beguiling vistas. But politically at least, this is an idyll Burma does not share. Charged by the United Nations with "a crime against humanity" for refusing to transfer power to the legally elected National League for Democracy, it is governed by a ruthless military dictatorship indifferent to human rights, enlisting propaganda as a legitimate tool of state control. The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), later renamed the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) rules Burma by fear and is, according to Amnesty International, responsible for a litany of abuses including rape, torture, murder, detention without trial, massive forced relocation and forced labour.

On my second day in Yangon I was fortunate enough to discover a rare commodity: Maung Ma Cho, a Burmese man with an exceptional grasp of English and a readiness to endanger his life by discussing the stark realities of life as a Burman. A bright yellow sticker overlay his car's back window. It displayed a picture of a gun embossed by the words, BACK OFF in bold black font - a serious display of dissent considering the 1996 SLORC decree demanding 20 years imprisonment for anyone publicly opposing the junta's policies. With his subversive views on the social system and capacity to infect others with his discontents, he represents the kind of free thinking SLORC is trying to ostracize.

Maung Ma Cho promised me an insight into life behind the veneer and held true to his word. I'd noticed the lack of cars on the roads, particularly in view of the chaos assailing the streets of just about any other South-East Asian city. He explained how the SPDC had levied petrol prices nine-fold overnight and without prior warning the previous month to help fund the relocation of government offices. Reluctant to relinquish SLORC's harsher sounding moniker, he talks of how freedom of expression is strictly curtailed and how the most basic of civil and political rights are ignored: scarce internet access is subject to official screening and even art exhibitions must be approved by military authorities. We pass the Yangon Institute of Economics, prompting Maung Ma Cho to recall the events of 1992, when universities nationwide were closed for four years following mass student demonstrations. Universities have reopened but are now segregated into departments and dispersed across the city to prevent large scale unity and the development of dissident thought.

We are on our way to Maung Ma Cho's place of work: a State-owned industrial estate fringing Yangon's leafy suburbs. Turning off the main highway and into the complex there could be no confusion we had entered military property. Army personnel sporting camouflaged attire and four foot long semi-automatic weapons guarded the wrought iron gates. Stopping at the security checkpoint, my Caucasian appearance was arousing suspicion. One of the guards leaned through the open window of the driver's door, pointed his gun in my direction and said in clear and terrifying terms, "go home!" I was in no position to argue. But Maung Ma Cho, offering a 'present' to the guards, had bought a ticket, and we were reluctantly allowed to pass. An unsealed path fed through the estate and on either side 'motivational' boards were erected in ten feet increments, bearing slogans such as Factory valour is quality product and Action first, report later. We passed a brick where factory children between the age of six and sixteen work in ten hour shifts in the stifling heat. They were shrouded in dust and shackled by ankle chains to ensure they remained at their post. Maung Ma Cho tells me this kind of scene is all too common.

We head to a busy coffee shop in central Yangon. An army jet flies overhead, as if to remind us of SLORC's omniscience. I can hardly push my way through the door for all the children jostling to catch a glimpse of me, perplexed by my presence. As in any country of relative economic subservience, sexual freedom tends to increase. As a pale-skinned outsider I'm constantly plagued by the feeling of being watched. Plain-clothed government informers roam the streets looking out for anyone expressing 'negative views' and jeopardizing the stability of the State. I asked Maung Ma Cho if informers could be listening to our conversation. "Without a doubt", was his answer.

We parted company, and I started to walk back to my hotel. Huge red billboards festoon the streets screaming such military slogans as The army is power and The army will never betray our national cause. I stop to photograph one and instantly regret it. Pocketing my camera I walk back along the road I'd just come from, sensing a pursuing presence. I'm alone and the streets are relatively quiet, rendering impossible the prospect of losing myself. It was never a conscious decision to do so, but a furtive glance behind me confirmed my suspicions: SLORC informers, two of them, making no obvious attempt to appear clandestine. I turned down a side road, but my pursuers had gained ground. They got within two metres of me; I could hear their dogged panting. Somehow converting my escalating fear into something resembling bravado, I turned, ballooned my chest and in no uncertain terms asked them what they wanted. What ensued was a brief but timeless period, a few seconds at most: black, impenetrable eyes staring deep into my own. Then they turned and walked away.

One need extrapolate only slightly to imagine a eugenically ordained State borrowed from Nineteen Eighty-four or Brave New World. These novels speak of the totalitarian dangers inherent in the corporate state - many of which are embodied in Burma. State-owned newspapers such as the Myanmar Times or the New Light of Myanmar are full of Orwellian propaganda of the 'Freedom is Slavery' ilk and virulent attacks on democratic forces. They epitomise Burma's plight and provide a stark testament to how power has been centralised and government control increased. Such dailies profess a primal and ultimate need for stability and do so on every page whether euphemised in the daily economic, political and social objectives column or outlined in the 'People's Desire' which encourages citizens to:

-Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views; - Oppose those trying to jeopardise stability of the State and progress of the nation;

- Oppose foreign nations interfering in international affairs of the State;

- Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy.

…yet another facet of what the Burmese people have come to accept as 'True Patriotism'.

It is entirely possible to visit Burma and leave unaware of the stultifying nature of SLORC's military regime or how the people they rule suffer at the hands of it - and that is what is so chilling about it; that a defunct military junta thriving on socialist values and oppression can continue to operate without acknowledgement, let alone intervention, from the Western world. Much is made in travel guides of the gracious hospitality of Burmese people, their warmth and good nature. But this is, it seems, tarred in pretence. Burma is not a place where aberrant behaviour, human error, emotional instability and social disorder are contemplated, least of all tolerated. In Burma the greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished. As Aldous Huxley observed in his foreword to Brave New World, "great is the truth, but still greater from a practical point of view is silence about truth". By forcing (quite literally at gunpoint in some instances) Burmans to maintain a façade of national reconsolidation, morale and patriotic spirit; by simply not mentioning certain subjects and lowering what Mr. Churchill called an 'iron curtain' between the masses and such facts, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than the most compelling of logical rebuttals.

Yet it is not a place devoid of all hope. With the decentralisation of government departments from the capital Yangon on the shore of the Bay of Bengal to the more covert location of the Pyinmana jungle, card-carrying revolutionaries such as Aung San Suu Kyi have military officials running scared. Naturally, official reasoning for this move espouses the kind of hackneyed propaganda and rehashed euphemisms inherent in State-owned newspapers and newspeak billboards, talking about the need to establish a State Constitution. More likely, initiatives behind the move have something to do with securing operations from a possible U.S. military attack on the strategically vulnerable capital, and for ease of monitoring the rebellious border regions, such as the ethnic peoples of Rakhine State and Chin State in the west and the north-west, Kachin State and Shan State in the north and the east, and Karen State, Kaya State and Mon State in the east and the south-east.

Reluctant to seek help from the West, Maung Ma Cho feels the fate of the Burmese people is in their own hands. He supports Aung San Suu Kyi's message - that only by fighting fear can they truly be free - a message the SPDC fears and aims to silence. Despite foreign investment saving the military from bankruptcy, Burma remains a poor country. The SPDC are faced with the problem of how to make people love their servitude. Without economic security, the love of servitude can never exist. Perhaps this is an appropriate place to start.

Whatever measures are proposed, the catalyst must surely be a desire to emerge from political inertia, to drive a square peg into SLORC's round hole, and to re-establish the kind of freedom and autonomy Burma enjoyed in pre-Empire days.