Briefly imagine the prosecution and long-term imprisonment of the cartoonist Steve Bell or the comedy writer Armando Iannucci for satirical works, or the singer Billy Bragg for inappropriate activism, and you begin to grasp both the significance and madness of this situation.
Next Monday afternoon a small demonstration in Trafalgar Square will draw attention to the desperate situation of a talented writer with a wicked sense of humour lying sick and isolated in a cell in the northern part of his country, imprisoned solely for questioning and satirising his country's regime.
Famous in his own country, Zarganar is virtually unknown here : one more faceless name doing good things far away. In Burma, only the country's imprisoned pro democracy movement leader Aung San Suu Kyi has broken through the barrier of indifference and information overload. But we would do well to remember that Suu Kyi is not the only one standing up against unimaginable repression. She is instead the leader and totemic representative of the 2,100 political prisoners incarcerated in Burma in 2010.