24 Facts About Zarganar

In September 2006, Zarganar was banned indefinitely from performing publicly or participating in any kind of entertainment related work.

Zarganar was arrested on 4 June 2008 for speaking to foreign media about the situation of millions of people left homeless after a cyclone devastated the Irrawaddy Delta.

In December 2008, Zarganar has been sent to Myitkyina Prison in Kachin State in the country's far north, from which he was freed on 11 October 2011 in a mass amnesty of political prisoners.

Zarganar was awarded the Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett Award, given by the Fund for Free Expression, a committee organized by the New-York-based Human Rights Watch.

In October 2008, Zarganar was awarded One Humanity Award by PEN Canada of which he is an honorary member.

Zarganar was born Thura in Yangon to a political and intellectual family of well-known writers Hla Kyi and Aung Thein.

Zarganar banded together with students from various colleges and institutes and formed a dance-troupe called Mya Kyun Tha.

Zarganar soon became a household name when his troupe began appearing on Burmese television in broadcasts of anyeint shows.

That all changed in 1988, when Zarganar was arrested for participating in the nationwide 8888 uprising.

In 1997, Zarganar soon ran afoul with the authorities for his movie Lun, and was promptly banned for another three years from the show business.

Since May 2006, Zarganar has again been banned from the show business indefinitely, for giving an interview to the BBC.

Zarganar helped to revitalize the art by turning the format upside-down.

Zarganar did not invent the art of using puns and double entendres, which had long been part of traditional Burmese humor but in many ways he perfected it in the Burmese language.

Zarganar divided the volunteers into groups of helpers, who took aid to 42 villages, some of which had until then received no help at all after the cyclone.

In January 2012, the British Foreign Secretary William Hague is due to meet Zarganar to discuss political reform as part of the first visit by a British Foreign Secretary to Burma in over fifty years.

In February 2012, Zarganar travelled to Washington, DC, to meet US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and discuss the ongoing issue of political prisoners, women's rights, and the situation of Myanmar's ethnic minorities with the country's senior officials.

In 2008, Zarganar was awarded the Freedom to Create Prize for Imprisoned Artists.

In May 2011, Zarganar was awarded Honorary Life Membership in Equity, the UK performers' union, in recognition of his struggle for artistic freedom in Burma.

Zarganar has been featured in This Prison Where I Live, a documentary film by British filmmaker Rex Bloomstein and German comedian Michael Mittermeier, who had secretly traveled to Burma to make the film.

In 2009, Zarganar was awarded the inaugural PEN Pinter Prize, established in memory of Harold Pinter.

On 27 March 2012, Zarganar received the Prince Claus Fund Award, handed over by Dutch ambassador Joan Boers during a historic Aneyint event in the People's Square in Yangon.

Between 1985 and 1988, Zarganar starred in four films and eight video movies as the lead actor.

Zarganar took on supporting actor roles in his movies since 2001.

In 2004, with the aid of local non-governmental organisations, Zarganar directed three short videos and a film for the purpose of raising awareness of HIV and AIDS in the country.