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Myanmar sentences activist
03/04/2008 17:33 - (SA)
Yangon - A veteran activist who staged a solo protest last year against Myanmar's military junta has been sentenced to life in prison for sedition, his lawyer said on Thursday.
Ohn Than, a member of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, was found guilty of demonstrating last year outside the US Embassy in Yangon, said Aung Thein, who will represent the convicted man at his appeal.
In Myanmar, a life sentence is a maximum of 20 years in prison, Aung Thein said. Ohn Than, who is in his mid-60s, was sentenced on Tuesday at a trial inside Yangon's Insein Prison, he said.
Ohn Than represented himself at his trial. He was arrested for standing outside the US Embassy on August 23 with a placard calling for the military regime that has controlled the Southeast Asian nation since 1988 to give up power.
The ruling junta held general elections in 1990 but refused to hand over power to the National League for Democracy when it won.
His solo protest came the same week that anti-government activists launched a series of street protests against fuel price increases and mismanagement of the economy.
Despite government efforts to quash them, the protests evolved by September into the largest anti-government demonstrations in almost two decades. The military halted the pro-democracy protests with a violent crackdown, killing at least 31 people by UN estimates and detaining thousands.
According to Aung Thein, Ohn Than argued during his trial that the authorities had tolerated and protected pro-junta demonstrators who staged protests outside US and British embassies early last year. The US and British governments are among the military regime's top critics.
Ohn Than has been jailed several times for his dissident activities. He served two years in prison for taking part in a solo protest outside a UN office in Yangon in 2004, and was detained in February and April last year after taking part in other protests.
The ruling junta tolerates little public dissent, sometimes sentencing dissidents to long jail terms for violating broadly defined security laws. The UN estimates there are more than 1 100 political prisoners in Myanmar, not including those who were detained in the September 2007 crackdown.
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