22 Brooten, McElhone and Venkiteswaran movement. He was imprisoned until April 1990, including seven months in solitary confinement (Human Rights Watch 2009). Hugely popular in the late 1980s, Zargana’s name means “tweezers”, referring to his ability to “pick out” the irony of political situations. Another well-known satirist and writer at that time was Maung Thawka, known by his pen name U Ba Thaw. He was a popular speaker at evening literary gatherings, where he could “reduce large audiences to fits of laughter with his satirical accounts of VIPs — very important pigs, very important phongvis (monks), very important government officials” (Allott 2001, p. 387). When an unofficial Union of Burmese Writers was launched in 1988, Maung Thawka was elected president. A known supporter of Aung San Suu Kyi, when she was placed under house arrest in July 1989, he was also arrested. Maung Thawka died in prison in 1991 (Allott 2001). These are only a few of the many stories of those who struggled against the military regime, a struggle that continued after the 1988 coup, bubbling under the surface for nearly two decades in this tightly controlled environment. Brewing Storms: Between a Coup and a Revolution The newly installed SLORC amended the 1962 Printers and Publishers Registration Act in 1989, increasing fines for infractions. For the press, writers and artists, a new range of topics became taboo, including democracy, human rights, politics, the events of 1988, government officials, and anything to do with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as references to South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela. Leading writers were arrested, such as Ba Thaw and Win Tin, the chairman and vice-chairman of Burma’s Writers’ Association. Rising production costs and tightening censorship made publishing more difficult and books and periodicals more expensive (Smith 1991; Hudson-Rodd 2008). Ethnic writers and intellectuals were also arrested or went underground, and fewer books were published in ethnic minority languages under the SLORC than under the BSPP regime (Smith 1991). The SLORC’s staterun media also orchestrated a xenophobic campaign against Burma’s substantial Indian and Chinese populations, warning against interracial marriage and its resultant racial impurity (Smith 1991). An additional censorship board was established in 1989 under the Ministry of Home and Religious Affairs to protect Burmese music 01 ch1-MyanmarMediaIT-5P.indd 22 8/4/19 10:29 am