A Rangoon Poet

04
Nov

Posted under Features, |

MAUNG THURA ('ZARGANA') is a 46-year-old comedian, poet and opposition activist, most recently arrested on June 4, 2008 by Myanmar authorities. When Cyclone Nargis hit in May, Zargana mobilized more than 400 entertainers to deliver aid. Their efforts, which they funded themselves, began just 5 days after the storm and reached people in 42 of the hardest-hit villages, few of whom had received sufficient aid from the government.

As they worked to deliver supplies, Zargana gave several interviews about his work and the needs of the people, and ridiculed state media reports about the government's relief effort. Zargana was charged with seven offences, including "defiling a place of worship with intent to insult the religion," during an August 14th hearing at the Rangoon West District Court and is currently being held in Insein prison.

Background: Zargana, (Maung Thura, whose pseudonym means "tweezers", referring to his years spent training as a dentist), was born in January 1962, the youngest son of writers Nan Nyunt Swe and Daw Kyi Oo. From a young age he accompanied his parents on speaking tours, and entertained people by giving performances and doing impersonations.. He went on to form a dance troupe and a drama group, which both performed on national television, and between 1985 and 1988 he played lead roles in four films.

Zargana became Burma's leading comedian, popular for his political satires, reviving the traditional Burmese role of the court jester who is the only person allowed to criticise the leader. When he joined a travelling troupe of comedians in 1982, Zargana was optimistic about the role of the comic, saying, "If the government takes a wrong step in the morning, we can criticise it at night..." For a while, the military authorities tolerated him, and even on occasion invited him to perform for them. But as the political climate deteriorated, the authorities lost patience and attempts were made to silence him.
During the 1988 uprising, Zargana gave speeches at the Rangoon General Hospital which attracted large audiences and won rousing ovations. He quickly became a leading voice of the student pro-democracy movement, although he never officially joined a political party. His crowd-pulling ability was second only to that of Aung San Suu Kyi, and his jokes were passed on by word of mouth throughout Burma.

Zargana was first arrested in October 1988 after making fun of the government, and freed six months later. However, on 19 May 1990, he impersonated General Saw Maung, former head of the military government, to a crowd of thousands at the Yankin Teacher's Training College Stadium in Rangoon. He was arrested shortly afterwards, and sentenced to five years in prison. He was held in solitary confinement in a tiny cell in Rangoon's Insein Prison.

In prison, Zargana was banned from reading and writing, so he scratched his poems on the floor of his cell using a piece of pottery before committing them to memory. These poems were only written down after his release. After his release in 1994, Zargana was banned from performing in public, but continued to make tapes and videos which were strictly censored by the authorities. In May 1996, after speaking out against censorship to a foreign journalist, he was banned from performing his work altogether, and stripped of his freedom to write and publish. He continued to defy the authorities, spreading his jokes by word of mouth, until his arrest on September 25, 2007, for supporting the monks in the Rangoon protests. He was released in October, and re-arrested in June, 2008.

Biography extracted from www.pencanada.com