Maung Thar Cho

Maung Thar Cho (Burmese: မောင်သာချို; born 11 March 1958) is a prominent Burmese writer, academic, professor and politician.[1][2] He served as a professor of Myanmar literature at the Yangon Teacher Training College. He wrote satirical articles for the 7Day Daily newspaper under the pseudonym of Jack - Kungyangon. These pieces proved immensely popular and earned him a following among NLD supporters, who invited him to literary talks around the country.[3][4]

In this Burmese name, Maung is an honorific, not a given name.
Maung Thar Cho
Maung Thar Cho released from the Insein Prison on 16 November 2022
Maung Thar Cho released from the Insein Prison on 16 November 2022
Native name
မောင်သာချို
Born (1958-03-11) 11 March 1958
Thonegwa village, Kungyangon Township, Myanmar
Pen nameJack (Kungyangon)
Occupation
  • writer
  • academic
Notable worksFor Daughter to Read
Notable awardsTun Foundation Literary Award (2009)
SpouseKhin Thet Swe

Maung Thar Cho is also known for criticizing the Tatmadaw via his literary talks and taking up politically sensitive cases against the Burmese military junta and generals.[5]

Early life and education

Maung That Cho was born on 11 March 1958 in Thonegwa village, Kungyangon Township, Yangon Division, Myanmar. He is the eldest child among three siblings.

He graduated from Yangon University in 1981 with a BA Myanmar. In 1983, he graduated with an honorary BA Myanmar. He received his master's degree in 1988.[6]

Career

He began his literary career in 1973, when he was in 10th grade. A poem, "Khit Thit Metta" which for the first time appeared in the December issue of Thaung Pyaung Htwela magazine is the piece with which he is said to become an author. In 1988, he became a senior editor of Eainmet Phoo magazine.[7]

Later, he worked as a teacher at the Workers College, Regional College, Foreign Language Science, Yangon University, Meikhtila Degree College and Hinthada College. He moved to Yangon Teacher Training College and served as a lecturer in the Myanmar Department.[7]

In 1997, he won the Mandalay Reader's Favorite Literary Award for his article Stars Ahead of Us (ဖျတ်ခနဲတွေ့ရသည့် ကျွန်တော်တို့ရှေ့က ကြယ်တာရာများ). In 1999, he won the Phyu Friends Literary Award for his article For Daughter to Read (သမီးလေးဖတ်ဖို့). In 2000, he won the Taungoo New Archive Literary Award for his book Articles for My Daughter to Read. In 2004, he won the Htan Yeik Nyo Literary Award for his book Linkara Road. In 2009, he was awarded the Tun Foundation Literary Award for his book Articles for My Daughter to Read.[7][8][9]

Maung Thar Cho was arrested in the early hours of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état on February 1, along with state leaders, ministers, and several political figures.[10] He is not in good health after undergoing military interrogation.[11] He was sentenced to two years in prison for incitement charges under Section 505(a) of the Myanmar Penal Code.[12][13] He was released on 16 November 2022 as part of a promised mass release of political prisoners.[14]

Selected works

He has authored over 72 books, of which 47 bookswrittenthored under Maung Thar Cho ahored under Jack (Kungyangon). Some of his selected works are as follows:

Under the pen name of Maung Thar Cho

  • သမီးဖတ်ဖို့
  • ပင်လယ်ဝသို့ လှေကလေးနဲ့ ထွက်ခဲ့
  • အိပ်မက်များ အနားမလာရ
  • လင်္ကာရလမ်း
  • နှလုံးသားရှုမျှော်ခင်းများ
  • ပိုးပင်လယ်ပေါ် ကတ္တီပါရွက်လွှင့်
  • ဖျတ်ခနဲတွေ့ရသော ကျွန်တော်တို့ရှေ့က ကြယ်တာရာများ
  • စိမ်းလန်းသောမိသားစုများ
  • ကျေးဂျူးကမ္ဘာဆိုင်
  • ဥတ္တရလမင်းနှင့် မြောက်ဘက်တောင်ကုန်းပေါ်က မှော်ရုံလမ်းများ
  • ခရီးသည် ရောက်ရာက မမေ့ပါဘု

Under the pseudonym of Jack (Kungyangon)

  • သပွတ်အူကျေးရွာမှ မမြင်ရသော ကံတရားများ
  • တို့တော့မယ်တဲ့ ဆိတ်တော့မယ်
  • ဂျာနယ်ထဲက ဂျက်
  • ရယ်လို့သာ မောကြပေတော့
  • လွမ်းလို့ရယ်တဲ့ မကုန်နိုင်တယ်
  • တုတ်ထိုးအိုးပေါက်
  • ဆင်တော်မှာ ခလောက်ကို ဆွဲပါလို့
  • မပြောကောင်း မဆိုကောင်း
  • လူကြားလို့ မကောင်းဘူး
  • ဂျက် ၅၀ စာအုပ်

References
  1. Newsource, C. N. N. (20 February 2021). "By day, Myanmar's protesters are defiant dissenters. By night, they're terrified of being dragged from their beds by the junta". KESQ.
  2. Helen Regan and Sandi Sidhu (20 February 2021). "By day, Myanmar's protesters are defiant dissenters. By night, they live in fear of arrest during an internet blackout". CNN.
  3. "How Myanmar's junta used a coup to settle old scores". Myanmar Now. 12 September 2021.
  4. "Literary talk given in Hsalingyi Township". Myanmar DigitalNews. 14 December 2019.
  5. "စာရေးဆရာ မောင်သာချိုနှင့် ဦးထင်လင်းဦး အလုပ်ကြမ်းနှင့် ထောင်ဒဏ်ချခံရ". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 22 February 2022.
  6. l (13 August 2013). ""လူ့အဖွဲ့အစည်းအတွက် ကဗျာ" ခေါင်းစဉ်ဖြင့် ဖန်တီးရေးသားခြင်းဆိုင်ရာအလုပ်ရုံဆွေးနွေးပွဲ ကျင်းပမည်". PEN Myanmar (in Burmese).
  7. Thar Cho, Maung (2000). To Daughter to Read. Yarpyae Literary. p. 1.
  8. "တာချီလိတ်၌ မြန်မာပိုက်ဆံအိတ်ကို ဆွဲပိတ်လိုက်ခြင်း ( မောင်သာချို )". Tachileik News Agency (in Burmese). 13 March 2013.
  9. "မြန်မာစကားမပျက်စီးရေးအတွက် ဗန်းစကားမသုံးရန်လိုဟု စာပေပညာရှင်များ ပြော". DVB (in Burmese). 3 March 2019.
  10. "Myanmar the Third-Largest Jailer of Writers in the World, Report Says". thediplomat.com. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
  11. yuth, Chan (2021-05-11). "In Military-Ruled Myanmar, Political Detainees Mark 100 Days Behind Bars". The Irrawaddy. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
  12. DMG. "Authors Maung Thar Cho and Htin Lin Oo sentenced to prison on incitement charges". www.dmediag.com. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
  13. "Insein Prison court hands sentences to writers detained on day of coup". Myanmar NOW. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
  14. "Myanmar's military junta releases outspoken artist Htein Lin who had been sentenced to a year's hard labour". The Art Newspaper - International art news and events. 2022-11-24. Retrieved 2023-01-30.
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