Mick Hartley

Valentine’s day is different in Burma:

A Burmese poet known for his odes to love has been arrested after penning a Valentine’s Day poem that carried a hidden message criticising the leader of the country’s military junta, Senior General Than Shwe.

The poet, Saw Wai, was arrested on Tuesday, a day after his poem “February 14” was published in the popular weekly magazine A Chit, or Love, according to friends and colleagues.

The poem is about a man broken-hearted after falling for a fashion model, whom he thanks for having taught him the meaning of love.

But if read vertically, the first word of each line forms the phrase: “Power crazy Senior General Than Shwe.”

Gen Than Shwe, 74, who has headed the junta since 1992, has little tolerance for criticism. He keeps himself sequestered in his remote, newly built capital, Naypyitaw, deep in the countryside…

Saw Wai regularly writes innocuous love poems for Burmese-language magazines and journals. He is also a member of an organisation of local artists and actors called White Rainbow, which helps HIV- infected orphans.

“You have to be in love truly, madly, deeply and then you can call it real love,” reads the poem for which he was arrested.

The verse ends with a call for unity in the name of love: “Millions of people who know how to love please clap your hands of gilded gold and laugh out loud.”

The Burmese word for million is “Than” and the word for gold is “Shwe.”

Newsvendors in Yangon, the largest city in Burma, said that authorities had removed the magazine from their newsstands.