Count Your Democratic Republic Blessings

This is very old news--like, November 21, 2008-old--but Spit Takes has been very busy over the last couple months and let this one sit and fester in her inbox. Apologies, particularly because this is a very sobering, important story.

Zargana, the Burmese comic I've mentioned before, was officially sentenced to 45 years in jail for his work helping the victims of Cyclone Nargis (!!). Here's the BBC:

Zarganar led a group of entertainers who organised private aid deliveries to victims of Cyclone Nargis, which hit in May.

An outspoken satirist of the military government, Zarganar had already been arrested and jailed four times before he was taken from his home again by the authorities in June.

At the time, he seemed to think the government would have no problem with his activities.

"No, we never encounter any problems, because we negotiated with them, and we just want to pass our donation parcels. We just want to encourage our people - this is our duty," he told the BBC in an interview just before his arrest.

He evidently violated the "Electronics Act," which regulates all electronic communications, by videotaping the destruction the cyclone left behind, and by criticizing the government in interviews with foreign media. The BBC's correspondent points out that such overreactions by the government in Myanmar--and of course this is just one of many--are "such breathtakingly disproportionate punishments" in order to "send two clear messages from the generals who rule Burma: that they will brook no opposition in the lead-up to their carefully managed transition to what they are calling a 'discipline-flourishing democracy;' and that they are unconcerned what the rest of the world thinks."

Of course, you can't be a county in this world now and not care what other countries think (hello? see where eight years of that got us?). Let's hope everything crashes and burns around them, and soon.

Ugh.