“The country’s most famous comedian was a man called Zaganar. In 1990 he joked that he’d just bought a new colour television, but when he got it home and turned it on it only had two colours: green and orange. Zaganar, whose name means “tweezers”, was poking fun at the endless airtime devoted to showing generals in uniforms making meritorious donations to orange-robed monks. He was arrested after the show, and spent the next five years in the notorious Insein Prison in Rangoon’s northern suburbs. (And yes, Insein is pronounced “Insane”.)”

—Andrew Marshall, The Trouser People: A Story of Burma—In the Shadow of the Empire, 2002.