No Laughing Matter

By AUNG ZAW

Be warned—if you crack a joke, Burma’s military leaders usually don’t laugh. Instead, they send you to prison.

Burma’s most famous comedian, Zarganar, committed the heinous crime of telling jokes as he was helping people in Irrawaddy delta after they had been devastated by Cyclone Nargis.

Zarganar spent time in prison in the early 1990s for making wisecracks. In May, he and his relief team of volunteers went to villages in the delta to deliver humanitarian assistance while the UN and the INGOs sat waiting in Thailand for visas.

Zarganar not only delivered aid, but he was able to speak to media groups inside and outside the country and recount what he had witnessed. He encouraged others to garner relief supplies and brought home to the outside world the horror of what had happened in the delta.

He went further than most by criticizing the UN—a name not often highly regarded in Burma. He was straightforward and truthful. He spoke about people he had seen who were traumatized, destitute and without food and water.

But while Zarganar was getting serious, the regime’s mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar spun its own version of a sick joke.

In one editorial, the newspaper said that cyclone survivors in the delta didn’t need foreign aid. It opined that those who had lost their families, friends, homes and farms could survive on fruit and fish, and even encouraged cyclone survivors to rummage around the reeds at night and hunt frogs for dinner. The editorial went on to predict that the delta would prosper again next year with vast golden fields of paddy.

When I spoke to Zarganar by telephone, he gave me his reaction to the New Light of Myanmar’s editorial.

“I have no idea whether the survivors can catch edible fish and frogs,” he said. “We renamed the Irrawaddy River and Bogalay River by the color of the water. The rivers are a chalky white color. We call it ‘Nargis color.’ There are many dead bodies and carcasses of cattle floating in the rivers. We call that the ‘Nargis odor.’ The stink clings to us when we come back from the villages. Nobody can stand it and it causes some people to vomit. How could people find edible fish and frogs in that environment?”

Listening to Zarganar on the phone in Rangoon, I feared he would be arrested soon. I was not wrong. A few days later the security forces came for him. I got the sense that he was prepared for it.

The comedian received a 45-year sentence effectively for criticizing the regime’s response to the humanitarian disaster in the delta.

Some foreign aid workers associated with UN agencies inside Burma expressed doubts as to whether Zarganar was involved in humanitarian operations in the delta or campaigning for the opposition instead.

However, nothing justifies the harsh sentences handed down to those like Zarganar.

Despite his crucial role in assisting cyclone survivors, Zarganar and many of the local aid groups may well have been supporters of the pro-democracy movement and this has made them the target of an ongoing crackdown on activities deemed inimical to the interests of the country’s ruling regime.

To date, twenty-two volunteer aid workers have been arrested and detained in connection with their relief work in the Irrawaddy delta.

Recently, six of the detained volunteers—Zarganar, Zaw Thet Htwe, Ein Khaing Oo, Tin Maung Aye, Thant Zin Aung and Kyaw Kyaw Thint—received lengthy prison sentences for their generous efforts on behalf of the victims of the disaster.

Activists Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, monk Gambira and Su Su Nway were sentenced on a dozen charges, including infringements of the Electronic Act, 505 b.

Min Ko Naing and eight other dissidents from the 88 Generation Students group were each sentenced on November 11 at a court in Maubin to 65 years in prison for their roles in the anti-government uprising last year.

I am sure political activists and prisoners have heard the news that Zarganar may be coming to join them. For those inmates he meets, I don’t doubt he will make their lives more bearable. He will make them laugh as he did the prison wardens during his incarceration in Insein Prison.

Last weekend, ageing dictator Than Shwe thought he could deliver a punch line of his won and leave everyone rolling in the aisles. The senior general urged the people of Burma to support the election in 2010 in his National Day message last Saturday. But no one laughed.

Now I have a serious question to ask you. If humanitarian workers, comedians and peaceful activists are given sentences that stretch beyond their life spans for helping refugees and nonviolently asking for democratic and economic reforms in the country, how many years incarceration would Than Shwe merit if he were put on trial?