Cyclone videos are underground hit in Myanmar - IndianExpress...

Hidden behind a stacek of pornographic video discs, Yangon street vendor Mg Zaw has even more sought-after contraband: footage of the destruction caused by Cyclone Nargis, which cut a deadly path through Myanmar’s heartland two weeks ago.

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Mg Zaw, who runs a video disc stall along Anawratha Road in central Yangon, said he started hawking the storm videos just two days after Nargis struck. “People buy them because they are interested in seeing what happened out there,” he said, eyes warily scanning for police conducting checks.

The discs are packaged in slim plastic holders with paper covers featuring grainy montages of bloated corpses floating in flood waters, collapsed houses and injured people being helped by villagers. Some sellers display them openly; others produce them only on request.

The videos show hand-held camera footage of bloated water buffalo carcasses, wooden boats parked outside roofless buildings and homes flattened by the storm, as well as groups of survivors squatting on roadsides with their few remaining possessions in baskets or bags. In one video, two stray dogs sniff the ground near the corpse of a young woman lying face-up on a coconut palm leaf.

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The videos are being bought either out of curiosity or, some say, as a way of coping with the tragedy, which left about 78,000 people dead and another 55,000 missing.

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