Actor Matt Dillon’s trip to Sittwe earlier this month was subdued and low-key. He visited the internal displacement camps and he talked to some Rohingya families. Afterwards, he and his small entourage left without incident.
Things didn’t turn out that way for Pakistani TV host and celebrity Waqar Zaka.
Zaka’s much-publicized (well, at least on his own Facebook page) tour of Rohingya camps came to an absurdist end over the weekend when he was kicked out from the country via Yangon’s airport, all the while joking with authorities and asking them to donate his remaining money to the persecuted Muslim minority, as the not-so-clandestine video footage of the episode shows.
The timeline is a little vague, but it seems that Zaka made it into the camps about a week or two ago, where he successfully donated money he had been raising online. Somewhere along the way he was stopped by immigration officials, put into a car and ordered to leave the country.
Of course, he filmed the whole thing through a mixture of I-Spy button cameras and mobile phones.
His last video was uploaded to his Facebook page on Sunday and opens with him riding in an SUV with immigration officials, whom he attempts to joke with and charm.
“Which girls are beautiful in the world, Thai girls, Chinese girls, Japanese girls, which girls are beautiful? Which girls? Burmese girls?” he asked.
“Myanmar girls,” one of the officials replies, setting off laughter in what is imaginably not a very fun situation for anybody involved. Zaka plays along.
“Myanmar girls, Oh! Myanmar girls,” he says. “Myanmar girls are cute!”
Everybody laughs again.
“Because we are Myanmar, that’s why [we like them],” the official explains, in case that wasn’t clear.
Zaka asked them how they found out he was in Sittwe and who complained about it. He says if they spill the beans he will take them out to party in Pakistan.
“Who reported against me, please now, now we are friends, you should tell me. Whenever you come to Karachi you have no idea how much fun I’m going to give you.”
In the airport, he puts his arm around one of the officials selfie-style and says: “He was investigating me for eight hours! Eight hours!”
They both smile as if at a great memory shared between two newfound friends.
“Am I getting deported?” he asks.
“No, this is not deportation.”
“You are just asking me to go?”
“Yes.”
Zaka tries a new tact.
“[But] I haven’t seen the clubs over here, I want to see the clubs! I seriously want to stay for clubs!”
This may be the most hilarious non-deportation deportation in Myanmar history.
Wherever he walks, a troupe of immigration officials follows and takes his picture, all the way to the gate and onto the plane.
Goodbye Waqar Zaka, I think it can be agreed that we are all going to miss you.
Here is the video of his “deportation,” but the footage from inside the car doesn’t start until around 40 seconds in. His Facebook page has much, much more, including a background image of him sitting and thinking reflectively about something at the Shwedagon Pagoda.
And here is the film from his trip to Sittwe, where he talks openly about paying bribes and lying his way past the airport authorities by posing as a “jolly tourist.”
Photo / Facebook / Waqar Zaka
