Word: maung
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Comedy is no laughing matter in Burma. Just ask Maung Thura, the country's most famous satirist, who performs under the stage name Zarganar, or "tweezers." On the night of June 4, the 47-year-old Burmese was arrested at his Rangoon home, shortly after he led a group of volunteers on an aid-delivery mission to the Irrawaddy Delta, which was devastated last month by a cyclone that left 134,000 people dead or missing. Before the police took him away, Maung Thura told foreign media outlets that many of the places he visited in the delta...
...Maung Thura trained as a dental surgeon, but he is the scion of a political family. Both of his parents were writers-turned-activists, and his comedy is characterized by intricate anti-government puns that routinely get him into trouble. After a democratic uprising in 1988 was brutally suppressed by the junta, Maung Thura spent several years in and out of jail. He has been harassed by the junta several times since then, most recently last September when he was arrested for daring to bring food to Buddhist monks who led another doomed pro-democracy push...
...police who arrested Maung Thura on June 4 did not indicate why he was being taken away, a common practice in a country with little regard for legal due process. Authorities also took more from the home than just the comedian. They took his computer, which contained video files of the plight of Nargis survivors. In addition, the security forces seized two DVDs. One was samizdat footage of the diamond-encrusted 2006 wedding ceremony of Than Shwe's daughter; the film highlighted the life of privilege led by the country's ruling elite, even as many Burmese struggle to fill...
...junta's response comes in the evening, when Brigadier General Thura Myint Maung, Minister of Religious Affairs, is quoted on state television as promising action against the monks. Within hours, trucks with loudspeakers are cruising Rangoon's dimly lit streets, announcing a curfew and threatening to arrest anyone who marches with the monks...
...side, Maung held the Burmese flag while another demonstrator held up a picture of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has not left the country since 1988. In 1990, when she was under house arrest, the junta refused to recognize her party’s victory in the parliamentary elections...