No comedy in Burma
Burma’s best-known comedian, Zargana, has been banned again from giving public performances or promoting his latest film.
The ban, issued by the Motion Picture and Video Censor Board, follows an interview Zargana did with the BBC during the recent water festival in which he criticized the military regime’s arch-conservative rules on culture.
The ban also blocks all public screening of the actor-director’s new film “We Can’t Stand Any More,” a satire on Rangoon’s social life.
Zargana - a dentist-turned-comedian - came to prominence in the 1980s for poking fun at the then socialist regime. This ban, which was issued on Sunday is not the first time he has found himself or his work banned.
The comedian has also been jailed twice for his social and political activism, first as a political dissident in 1988, then again in 1990 while helping his mother in her campaign for the May general elections that year.
Zargana—whose name means tweezers—won the Lillian Hellman and Dashiel Award in 1991 after being nominated by the Fund for Free Expression, a committee of Human Rights Watch.
(via The Melon Farmers)
Tuesday 23 May 2006 | Paul | Burma
