Defend Your Rights: freedoms as the leaves of a tree, Burma 1953

A Burmese-language poster filed with the U.S. Information Agency's posters for Asia, catalog date 2 March 1953. A large tree on a blue ground carries a line of text on each leaf, its roots are labeled "Democracy," and a closing line warns readers not to break the branches that shade them (NAID 5729936).

The tree

One big tree fills a blue sheet. Its leaves each hold a short line of Burmese, and the archive reads the opening word of every line as the word for "free." The roots carry a single label. A headline above speaks to the reader directly, and a line at the foot turns the picture into a warning.

သင်၏ကျွန်အခွင့်အရေးများကို ကာကွယ်လော!

[eight leaves, each a line beginning လွတ်လပ် (free...); individual leaf text - [illegible] at scan resolution]

[root label] ဒီမိုကရေစီ

သင့်အားအရိပ်ပေးနေသည့် အခက်များကိုမချိုးလေနှင့်

[English, as given by the archive:] Defend your rights!

[...]

[root label] Democracy

Do not break the branches that give you shade.

Whose poster

The National Archives keeps the sheet in Record Group 306 with the U.S. Information Agency's posters distributed in Asia, under a catalog date of 2 March 1953. FRAME's maker line names the agency and the State Department exchange program that preceded it. No sender is transcribed from the face of the poster, and the archive classes the source as blurred. It files the theme as elections and party politics and the purpose as "Persuade or win support."

Rights and roots

The archive tags one technique, glittering generalities. That is a fair call on what can be read: "free" repeated down the leaves, "Democracy" at the root, and no law, election or institution named. Because the leaf text could not be read at the archive's scan resolution, a reader of this record does not learn which freedoms the poster listed.

The picture also makes a claim of its own. It shows rights growing out of democracy, as branches grow from roots, and it tells the reader that breaking a branch costs him his shade. A reader who holds that rights belong to people before any government does would put it the other way round: rights come first, and governments, elected or not, exist to protect them. The poster's version is gentler to whoever holds power, since it makes liberty something the system grows.

A 1951 sheet for Burma from the State Department's files was more concrete. We Want / We Do Not Want listed speech, writing, organizing and worship by name. The next year, Totalitarianism Is Your Enemy went the other way, to a single label and a pointing finger. The U.S. Information Agency hub covers the overseas poster program.