Zarganar, the leading Burmese poet, comedian and activist who iscurrently being detained for criticising the Burmese junta's handlingof the cyclone that hit the country in May, has been honoured with PENCanada's 2008 One Humanity Award.
Zarganar, whose real name is Maung Thura, was arrested in June forcriticising the Burmese junta's handling of Cyclone Nargis andorganising relief efforts for its victims - which could land him 15years in jail. Not that jail is anything new for him. Zarganar, as a leading voice ofthe pro-democracy movement, has been arrested at least four timessince 1988, including for supporting the monks in the Rangoon protestslast September. In May 1990, he was arrested for impersonating General Saw Maung,former head of the military government.
He served four years of afive-year sentence, during which time he was banned from reading andwriting - so he scratched poems on the floor of his cell with a pieceof pottery and committed them to memory. He continues to be banned from performing and stripped of his freedomto write and publish. The PEN Canada One Humanity Award honours someone "whose work hastranscended the boundaries of national divides and inspiredconnections across cultures."
PEN Canada says, "One such writer is ourHonorary Member Zarganar, whose steadfast courage and integrity overmany years we are honouring by granting him the One Humanity Award." The CAD$5,000 award (US$4,000) is being given in absentia on 22October at a PEN Canada benefit in Toronto.
For more information about Zarganar and samples of his work, see:
http://www.pencanada.ca (22 October 2008)
