Burmese Poet Released from Prison

In Burma, poems still have the power to commit a "crime against public tranquility."

Saw Wei was arrested on January 2, 2008, after his poem “February the Fourteenth,” an eight-line verse about Valentine’s Day, was published in the Rangoon-based weekly magazine Love Journal. An acrostic poem, when the first letters of each line are put together, they read “General Than Shwe is crazy with power” in Burmese.

PEN reports Saw Wei has been released.