Dissident Spotlight: Htun Zaw Win
Htun Zaw Win, better known as Wyne, satirized Myanmar's theft of land from poor farmers and went to prison for it.

Western readers are used to artists criticizing their governments. Evil government agents feature in popular franchises like James Bond. The U.K. didn’t bat an eye when parliament blew up in V for Vendetta, either.
Democracies make room for dissenting voices, so plot points like these can flourish in film. By contrast, authoritarians don’t like to be criticized. Despite the terrible things they do to the people they have power over, they want to be perceived as the people’s voice. Competing voices undermine the ruler’s claim to be the only viable voice.
So, when a filmmaker working under Myanmar’s military dictatorship created a film that made fun of the country’s censorship board in 2012, then protested the military coup in 2021, he had to be silenced.
Censorship and Land Theft in Myanmar
In Myanmar, filmmakers had to submit their scripts to the country’s censorship board to ensure the film complied with the board’s restrictions. That meant no sex scenes, no drug use, and no touching political hot buttons.
In 2012, Wyne released a short film called Ban that Scene! The film lambasted Myanmar’s censorship board. Ban that Scene! also satirized military land theft. Members of Myanmar’s military junta seized farmland from mostly poor farmers who couldn’t resist.
Ban that Scene! was only possible because Wyne didn’t submit the script to the censorship board. Myanmar’s censorship rules for movies only apply to films “made for sale”. Wyne couldn’t make money on the film, but he could release it uncut.
He also didn’t receive jail time. Myanmar had a civilian government from 2011 to 2021. Wyne’s prison sentence came later after the military wrested control of the government from the civilian leadership.
Protest, Hiding, and Arrest
After the military retook control of Myanmar’s government, the generals ended the decade of tolerance. Wyne encouraged other artists to protest the coup. Between his previous work criticizing the government and his current protest activity, Wyne’s was the kind of voice the military junta wanted silenced. A warrant went out for his arrest in February 2021.
Wyne went into hiding and evaded arrest until February 2022. He was arrested under charges of “incitement.” When Deadline got the story, the reporters were relieved that Wyne made it to prison. The article noted that many dissidents the military arrested disappeared after the soldiers arrived.
However, the junta pardoned Wyne the next month. He and a few other celebrities were pardoned “in order to participate in nation building with their art.”
Wyne released his last movies in 2019, so it’s unclear what role he’s played in the junta’s “nation building.”
What is clear is that autocracy empowers the most thin-skinned critics to censor films. Only the most neurotic people can be so attuned to dictators’ mercurial whims that they can fit art to the state’s standards.
It takes heroes like Wyne to push against censorial boundaries and ultimately break them.