Thousands dead, millions hungry ... so Burma's junta arrest the country's funniest man in humour crackdown

Maung Thura - better known by his stage name Zarganar - was taken into custody Wednesday night by police after they searched his house, the family said.

He had just returned from the cyclone-shattered Irrawaddy delta where he had been donating relief items to survivors.

His family said Zarganar, who has been imprisoned several times, suffers from hypertension.

In an interview earlier this week, Zarganar said he and more than 400 entertainers in Burma had volunteered to aid victims of Cyclone Nargis, making numerous trips to the delta to help some of the more than 2 million victims of the storm.

Held: Two of the comedy trio, the Moustache Brothers, are also in custody

Funnyman: Maung Aung

Zarganar, 46, was last arrested and held for three weeks for providing food and other necessities to Buddhist monks who spearheaded anti-government protests in Yangon last September.

His comedy routines are banned for their jokes about the junta that rules Burma as well as satire about economic and social conditions in the country.

"Burmese people love to laugh. But if I can't speak, jokes will still spread. The people will make them up themselves," he told a reporter in 2006.

Burma's military, which has held power since 1962, refused to comment.

The ruling generals brook no dissent and frequently arrest artists and entertainers regarded as opposing their regime, even those making seemingly innocuous wisecracks.

Two of the Mustache Brothers, a trio of comedians, were sentenced to five years of hard labor in 1996 after making fun of the country's rulers.

A campaign by the London-based rights group Amnesty International later helped secure their release.

Zarganar, whose name means "tweezers," is also a successful producer, director, writer and actor. He also works as a dentist to pay bills.

He was first arrested in 1988 for his political activities and again for helping his mother - a member of the opposition National League for Democracy - during her campaign for the May 1990 general elections.

The NLD, the party of detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, swept those elections, but the military regime refused to give up power.

In 1991, when still behind bars, Zarganar won the Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett Award, given annually to artists around the world who have been victims of political persecution and in need of financial aid. It is administered by U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

In an interview this week with the Thailand-based magazine Irrawaddy, Zarganar said since May 27 he had been to every township in the delta struck by the cyclone except one.

Some areas, he said, had neither been reached by the government nor international relief agencies. He and his group distributed food, blankets, mosquito nets and other emergency aid.

Zarganar said his group sometimes had "confrontations with authorities" during the trips.

Earlier, other Myanmar entertainers had complained that authorities want all aid to be distributed through official channels rather than by private individuals and groups.

The U.N. has estimated 2.4 million people are in need of food, shelter or medical care as a result of the storm, which the government said killed 78,000 people and left another 56,000 missing.

Myanmar's regime has been sharply criticized by the international community for its inept handling of the disaster and for barring foreign aid workers from the delta. The ban was later officially lifted but aid agencies still report holdups and foot-dragging by the regime.