Zarni Kuniead Tun

SABAI

Zarni Kuniead Tun's photo series SABAI is based on his journey through the Mekong River in South East Asia. Throughout Thailand and Laos, Tun's observational street photography eye documents the landscapes, people and lives that will eventually be displaced from the rapid infrastructure development. 

Zarni Kuniead Tun is a street photographer and beat-maker from Sydney, Australia. Currently working in environmental science.

During my trip, I traveled from North Thailand into Laos through the Mekong River with a family friend who is a lecturer specialising in geopolitics in South-East Asia (with a lot of his work focused on the Mekong River Region). Over the course of this 3-day boat trip, we passed many indigenous communities who rely on the river’s resources to sustain and preserve their culture, language and livelihood. As we progressed up the river and further into Laos, we were told about the local struggles and diminished voices of these communities who are overruled by the typical South-East Asian problems of corruption, transnational infrastructure development, and the exploitation of natural resources. Thirteen dams are already built in the main stem of the Mekong (as of 2021). Towards the end of the boat trip, we passed the current major dam construction in full effect funded by the top banks of Thailand.

The country in charge of this development has had such a heavy hand in the monopoly of industries in Thailand, that they threatened to blacklist the banks who were against the development of the dam. The eventual construction of this dam inevitably raises the river’s water levels, flooding out ethnic villages that have lived and survived on these waters for thousands of years. The Thai government’s compensation is to relocate ethnic villagers to the big cities of Thailand & Laos where they have to learn a new language, find employment, and become accustomed to a foreign way of living.