Comedian becomes latest victim of the kangaroo courts

Burma's best known satirist and comedian, Zarganar (pictured), was sentenced to 45 years imprisonment today by a kangaroo court ordered by the country's brutal regime to silence him once and for all. Zarganar, whose name means 'pliers', is a qualified dentist but the name refers rather to the pain he caused the regime's generals.

One popular Zaganar joke went: There was this lucky Burmese chap who managed to get a passport and travel to India . He visited a dentist for treatment. "Why not wait until you're home agan and visit your dentist there?" he was asked. "Don't you have dentists in Burma?"

"Sure," said the Burmese visitor. "But we can't open our mouths."

In the latest of a series of trials being held behind the walls of Rangoon's notorious Insein Prison, a respected monk and leader of last September's anti-government movement, Ashin Gambira, was sentenced to 68 years imprisonment. It was the severest punishment yet handed out by the military judges to around 100 regime critics in a wave of trials that began earlier this month.

Zarganar has been in and out of prison several times for his political satire. He was arrested again in June last year after returning from a mission to deliver relief supplies to victims of Cyclone Nargis.

In a raid on his Rangoon home, police found CDs containing footage of the opulent wedding of junta supremo Than Shwe's daughter Thandar Shwe. Filmed excerpts from the wedding had appeared on several websites within Burma and abroad, arousing widespread outrage at the tasteless display of wealth.

Zarganar is due to appear again at next week's trial sessions on further charges and his sentence is sure to be increased. Many of his associates and friends have already been sentenced to terms of up to 65 years.

The trials - in which even defence lawyers have been jailed for questioning court procedures - are seen as an attempt by the regime to silence all opposition in the lead-up to the general election it plans to hold in 2010.

FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 21, 2008