Laughing All the Way to Prison
(Page 2 of 2)
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That all changed in 1988. He plunged himself into the uprising, agitating for change and addressing the crowds of demonstrating students. He was inevitably arrested, interrogated for eight days and then locked up in Insein prison for nearly a year, accused of being an “instigator” in the uprising.
At the time of the 1990 election he was again arrested for giving political speeches. His father, the writer and artist Nan Nyunt Swe, was also politically active, speaking at one time in National Day celebrations in Suu Kyi’s house and subsequently banned by the regime’s censors. Zarganar’s mother, Kyi Oo, won election as an independent candidate in the 1990 poll.
A four-year prison sentence now awaited Zarganar. One year after the prison doors again closed on him, he was awarded the Lillian Hellman and Dashiel Hammett Award, given by the Fund for Free Expression, a committee organized by
After his release from prison in 1994, Zarganar was allowed to participate in video productions, working as producer, director, scriptwriter and actor. But his work was closely scrutinized by the censors and military intelligence, in a cat-and-mouse game in which Zarganar and his audiences took delight in sidestepping the authorities.
They didn’t always succeed, and much of his work never reached a public audience. Last February, his video movie, with the prophetic title “Run Out of Patience,” was banned.
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