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The Fight For Freedom in Burma

Maung Saungkha





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Credit...Lynn Ni Thway
13.12.2015

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( - /) Kamayut Media 5.1.2016

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The Bizarre Trial of a Poet in Myanmar

By Joe Freeman March 2, 2016 http://www.newyorker.com

Maung Saungkha in a holding-cell waiting area at a court in Yangon in

December. Saungkha is on trial in Myanmar for writing a poem about having a tattoo
of the countrys president on his penis. Credit Photograph Courtesy Aung Naing Soe
The Burmese poet Maung Saungkha does not have a tattoo of Myanmars President
on his penis. At least, that is what he has told everyone who has asked him recently.
He may soon have to prove it in court. The twenty-four-year-olds anatomy became
a matter of public interest on October 8th, of last year, when Saungkha posted a
short poem, titled Image, to his Facebook page. The most staid translation reads
like this:
On my manhood rests a tattooed
portrait of Mr. President

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My beloved found that out after
we wed
She was utterly gutted,
Inconsolable.
In its brief coverage of Saungkhas ordeal, the international media has seized on a
more salacious, and catchier, version: I have the Presidents portrait tattooed on my
penis/ How disgusted my wife is.
Weeks after Saungkha posted the poem online, I went to see him in a holding cell,
where he was handcuffed to a police officer and awaiting trial for defamation.
Saungkha, a slim man with boyish features, told me, through a translator, that he
did not think his words would stir up so much trouble. He cited Myanmars abolition
of censorship and its transition to democracy, a process that began in 2010 and
culminated, or seemed to, on November 8, 2015, when voters pushed the Nobel
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, into
power for the first time. Even though it is said we have freedom of expression, now
they charged me because I wrote a poem, Saungkha said. So I was surprised.
Poetry has long played a political role in Myanmar, and many poets there before
Saungkha have been sent to prison. In the early part of the twentieth century,
nationalists used verse to rouse those who struggled for independence from Great
Britain. Many of the activists who participated in the countrys widespread prodemocracy protests in 1988 were also writers and poets. Saungkha himself is an
interfaith activist, and a member of a youth group connected to Suu Kyis party. That
party, the N.L.D., tapped several poets to run for parliament in November, and
eleven were reportedly voted into office. After the election, I travelled to Naypyidaw,
the capital, to interview one of them, Tin Thit. I told him that his story was
remarkable: a poet who defeated a former defense minister at the ballot box. Tin
Thit did not seem to find it very surprising.

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But the rise of democracy in Myanmar has brought some unexpected changes. One
of the ironies of life under an authoritarian government is that it can be easier to
navigate what is and is not permissible than it is when freedom comes. Only a few
years ago, Saungkha might have published his poem in a local journal, perhaps
under a pseudonym, so as to avoid detectionor he might not have published it at
all: writing a poem using the words President and penis before 2010 would have
been practically unthinkable, or at least very daring. In 2008, the poet Saw Wai was
arrested for an anti-junta verse weakly disguised as a Valentines Day poem. Titled
February 14th, the poem sounds like something from a bad romantic comedy.
You have to be in love truly, madly, deeply and then you can call it real love, one
of the lines reads. But, as authorities eventually discovered, the poem was an
acrostic that called out the leader of Myanmars junta. The first letter in each line
spelled out Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe. Saw Wai was sentenced to
two years in prison.
When Saungkha posted his poem online, it was noticed by Hmuu Zaw, the director
of the office of the President, Thein Sein. Hmuu Zaw is a prolific Facebook user, and
quickly posted a rant about the poem, in which he warned that Saungkha should be
prepared to take responsibility for what hed written. If there is any connection
between that post and what came next, it has not been proven, but police showed
up at Saungkhas house that same night, looking to arrest him. Saungkha fled before
the police arrived. Bard on the Run, Dodging Defamation Over Risqu Rhyme, a
headline in the The Irrawaddy, a local magazine, declared.
Saungkha went into hiding, but he continued to post on Facebook. You can arrest
only the poets/ Not the poems/ Never, he wrote in late October. Two weeks later,
three days before the election, he was arrested. He was attending the trial of
student activists, who had been rounded up for protesting a controversial education
law. Eyewitnesses say Saungkha was taken by plainclothes officers, moved to an
unmarked vehicle, and driven away. That day was a really noisy day, one of the
lawyers on his defense team told me, describing the people who took him as not
police, just, like, mafia. Other activists chased after the men who arrested
Saungkha, he said, describing the scene as comical. It was really funny, you know.
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Arrests had been on the rise in the run-up to the election. In October, as police were
looking for Saungkha, two people, a humanitarian worker, Patrick Khum Jaa Lee,
and an N.L.D. supporter, Chaw Sandi Htun, were charged for separate Facebook
posts that allegedly defamed the military. In each case, the charges cited Article
66(d) of the Telecommunications Law, which spells out violations for online
defamation. The maximum penalty is three years in prison. (Khum Jaa Lee and
Chaw Sandi Htun have since been given six-month sentences.)
Use of the Internet in Myanmar has soared in recent years. In 2014, SIM cards, once
a luxury item, became widely affordable, after two foreign telecommunications firms,
Qatars Ooredoo and Norways Telenor, launched new networks in the country,
creating competition with state-backed Myanma Posts and Telecommunications. The
chip-sized subscription cards can now be bought on the street for less than two
dollars, inserted into smartphones, and hooked up to one of the three networks in a
matter of minutes. Soon after the new firms arrived, seemingly everybody was
online, from lawmakers to Buddhist extremists to former generals and poets.
Myanmars Minister of Information was dubbed the Minister for Facebook on
account of his frequent posts. One former M.P. self-published a book consisting
entirely of his Facebook posts. According to a 2015 report put out by PEN American
Center, Myanmar has the fastest-growing Internet market in Asia. Their country has
leapfrogged from near silence and isolation to a connected, smartphone society:
more people now have mobile phones in their hands than electricity in their homes,
the report says.
Facebook is one of the most popular social media services in Myanmar, along with
the messaging app Viber. But, as in neighboring Thailandwhere liking a post
deemed defamatory to the King can get you in troublethe platform is a blessing
and a curse. The government has had difficulty controlling hate speech that swirls
online and erupts into real violence. And it has provided the authorities with a new
way of monitoring what people are saying. Myanmar has a population of roughly
fifty-one million, but Facebook has made it feel like a much smaller place.
On a morning in late November, I took a taxi to Shwe Pyi Thar Township, on the
northern fringes of Yangon, the countrys largest city. The contrast between new
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industry and persistent poverty was stark; along one stretch of road, squatters live
in one-room shacks across the street from a gleaming soda factory. The Shwe Pyi
Thar Township Court is a compound made up of a row of rooms that, from the
outside, could be mistaken for a school. In the back, however, are the holding cells,
crude wooden structures, with a narrow waiting area protected by barbed wire.
When I first entered one of the courtrooms, I was struck by how small it was. A
Burmese member of an international trial-monitor group leaned over to me and said,
This courtroom is the biggest one I have ever seen.
I had come for what I thought would be Saungkhas first hearing. Saungkha lives in
Shwe Pyi Thar with his parents and studies English at Yangons British Council. I was
the only foreigner at the trial, but the courtroom grounds were packed with
supporters and friends wearing white T-shirts that said, across the front, Poetry Is
Our Right. Saungkha was sitting on the bench outside the two holding cells. I think
I will get released if they are fair, he told me. But I dont expect too much,
because they thought I wrote it intentionally. I am worried because I am just
twenty-three years oldhis birthday was in Januaryand I have to continue my
education, and I have a lot of things to do with poetry. Its like they are oppressing
my young life. He pointed out that he didnt mention any President by name in the
poem, and so it couldnt be defamation. It can be the President of U.S.A., he said.
It can be the President of Afghanistan.
Robert Sann Aung, his lawyer, strode into the compound. Sann Aung is the most
famous human-rights lawyer in Myanmar. He was there when Saungkha was
arrested, because he represents the student activists whose trial Saungkha was
trying to attend. Sann Aung wears a frayed hat with a brim, chews betel nut, and
carries a satchel. He handed me his business card; under his title, Advocate, it
said, in parentheses, 6th time Former Political Prisoner. Sann Aung said he wanted
to find a male judge who could handle the case. The female judge to whom the trial
had been assigned might have to look at the evidence, he added, laughing. But he
wasnt kidding: that day, he filed a request for a new, and male, magistrate.
A new hearing was scheduled for a week later. Before leaving the compound, I
asked Saungkhas parents what they thought of the case against their son. I am not
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surprised that this is happening, because it used to happen in Myanmar, his father,
U Aung Than Myint, said. We are hoping that he will get released, because we are
his parents. And I think he didnt do any big mistakes, so I think he will get
released. I asked one of Saungkhas friends, Ko Zey, what he thought of the poem.
It could be any President, he said, echoing the defenses argument. But did he like
the poem? His answer seemed deliberately vague. Whether it is good or not is a
question of whether you like it or not, he said.
On December 4th, when the trial was set to resume, I returned to the courtroom,
along with a translator. A male judge had been chosen, but the chief of police, who
filed the original complaint, did not show up. The trial was pushed back again. By
this point, Suu Kyis party had won the electionbut the next President has yet to be
chosen, and the Presidents five-year term will not start until April. Suu Kyi, whose
backers want her to be President despite a constitutional clause barring those with
foreign children from the post (her two sons are British citizens), had the support of
the creative class during her campaign: poets, rappers, singers, actors, painters.
Sann Aung said that he believed her government would make things better for them.
In an encouraging sign, the N.L.D. has said that political prisoners will be a focus of
the incoming administration. In January, dozens of such prisoners were freed by the
same outgoing President whom Saungkha is accused of defaming. The poem is just
a metaphor, Sann Aung said, noting that its the broad wording of the criminal code
that makes prosecuting Saungkha possible. These sections should be repaired in
the time of the new government.
But why did Saungkha write the poem? I had never heard a full explanation.
I have two sources of inspiration for this poem, Saungkha told me, the day that
the police chief failed to appear. The first one came from a movie I watched, The
Hunger Games: MockingjayPart 1. He was thinking, he said, of the villain in that
movie, President Snow. He was also thinking of tattoos of Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela,
and other leaders; he had seen photos of such tattoos on social media. So we put
the tattoos of the person we love on our chest or somewhere, he said. So where
should we tattoo the leaders who oppressed us, or who we dislike? But the reason I

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used the word President came from the movie Hunger Games, and the character
President Snow.
Saungkha and I discussed the incoming government of Myanmar, but he didnt seem
assured. I want to say something to this government. If they have any plan to run
in the 2020 election, they should learn how to read poems, he said. As long as
they dont have any capacity to understand the critical poems by a citizen, or as long
as they dont understand the mind of a poet, they cant be an elected government
again.
The police chief, Thein Win, came to the next hearing, on December 17th. There
was a larger police presence, and officers stood in the two doorways guarding the
entrances, but onlookers and reporters were able to poke their heads in and record
the proceedings on their smartphones. Before Sann Aung could question Thein Win,
the court charged Saungkha with an additional count: inspiring others to commit
harm against the state or to disturb the public. In court, Sann Aung wore one of the
standard outfits for a male lawyer in Myanmar: a black robe and a shockingly pink
head wrap called a gaung baung. (These are also worn in parliament, in a variety of
colors.) He began by asking Thein Win how one opens Facebook, presenting him
with three choices: log in, log out, and log luck. Everyone around me started
chuckling: it was obvious that Sann Aung was trying to prove that the cop didnt
have a Facebook account, and never saw the original post, which would suggest that
he was told to file the complaint by someone higher up. I use what I need to open
it, Thein Win answered, cryptically. When Sann Aung pressed him, Thein Win said
that sometimes he used in and sometimes he used out.
Later, Sann Aung asked Thein Win if he knew how to read poems. The Police Chief
laughed. How would I know how to read poems? he said, Im a police officer!
Sann Aung asked if he was interested in literature. I like to read, but I am not
interested in literary art. Have you ever gone to listen to literary talks? Sann Aung
asked. I havent gone to listen to literary talks, Thein Win replied.
Finally, Sann Aungs questioning took a strange turn: he accused the Police Chief of
affecting the states dignity, and he said he would sue him in the same court.
Countersuits are common in these types of cases, and they usually get thrown out.
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The hearing ended, and the Police Chief left immediately, declining to comment. I
talked to Saungkha, who told me about his routine in jail: running during the day,
reading at night. The most recent poem he had written was a romantic verse about
his girlfriend, who had attended every trial. I asked him what poets he liked. T. S.
Eliot and the Russian poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Yevgeny Yevtushenko, he told
me. For fiction his current favorite is Haruki Murakami. I noticed a batch of books
that had been given to him. One was a volume of self-help poetry called Present
Moment, Wonderful Moment.
Saungkha turned twenty-four on January 5th. The lawsuit against the Police Chief
was dismissed on the same day, and Saungkhas supporters held a little party for
him at the courthouse after the hearing. There was cake and presents. Somebody
bought a cage full of small birds. Saungkha opened the door and symbolically freed
them; they flitted through the barbed wire. Candles were lit, and he gave a brief
speech. Everyone sang Happy Birthday and took pictures.
Meanwhile, his case drags on. The last time I interviewed him, on the morning of
February 9th, he told me he had written a new poem in custody. It was one of those
long days at court in which little happens. The lawyer filling in for Sann Aung, who
was busy with another case, was very late. Once the lawyer arrived, the witness for
the day had yet to show up. Around 2 P.M., I noticed that Saungkhas new poem had
already been posted to his Facebook account, and it was being shared and liked
and commented on. (He has access to a phone while waiting at court.) The poem
described flinging the specific clause of the military-era constitutioncalled 59(f)
that bars Suu Kyi from the presidency at an unidentified persons bald head. When
I asked him later if he meant the President of Myanmar in this poemthe President
of Myanmar is indeed baldhe shrugged his shoulders, grinned, and responded in
English. Putin also, bald head, he said.

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INDEX - TAG
AUNG SAN SUU KYI,MYANMAR, BURMA, GENERAL AUNG SAN, GENERAL NE WIN,
SENIOR GENERAL SAW MAUNG, SENIOR GENERAL THAN SHWE, GENERAL THEIN
SEIN, GENERAL TIN OO, NLD, HUMANRIGHTS IN MYANMAR/BURMA, MILITARY
DICTORSHIP IN MYANMAR/BURMA, CEASEFIRE AND PEACE IN MYANMAR/BURMA,
YANGON, RANGOON, MANDALAY, SHAN, UWSA WA, KACHIN, CHINA-MYANMAR
RELATIONS, INDIA-MYANMAR RELATIONS, THAILAND-MYANMAR RELATIONS,
BANGALADESH-MYANMAR RELATIONS, HISTORY OF BURMA, HISTORY OF
MYANMAR, HISTORY OF SOUTH EAST ASIA, RANGOON, YANGON, MANDALAY,
NAYPYITAW, BAGAN,

CIVIL WAR IN MYANMAR/BURMA,
- ( ), Maung Saungkha

SCRIBD.COM
A5
2015
- ( )

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