Yangoon (AsiaNews/Agencies) Myanmar's military junta still detains peaceful political activists in harsh jail conditions, often without charge, this according to a recently released Amnesty International report.
The human rights group said there are at least 1,350 political prisoners in Burmamany ordinary people merely arrested for exercising their fundamental rightsand is currently involved in a campaign to get them freed.
The most prominent prisoner of conscience is pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Ms Suu Kyi, who turns 60 on Sunday, has spent nine of the past 16 years in some form of detention.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) leader won the 1990 elections by a landslide but was never allowed to take power.
She has been under house arrest since May 2003 and for two other stretches since 1989: the first time, for six years between 1989 and 1995; and the second time, for 20 months until she was freed in May 2002.
The military government has said it will release her, along with other political prisoners "when the time is right", but has not set a date.
Ms Suu Kyi said she does not want to be freed before all the others.
Like the NLD leader, U Tin OoNLD vice-chairmanhas also been under house arrest since May 2003.
Along with both of them, the Amnesty report lists more than 200 less well-known prisoners, many whom have also been held on and off since 1989many of them students or elderly in their seventies and eighties.
U Win Tin, a journalist and a NLD member, has been in detention since 1989. His health is failing, yet he has sometimes been denied food and water and made to sleep without bedding in a cell designed as a dog kennel.
When he was already in jail, he was sentenced for writing articles highlighting human rights abuses in prisons.
Other prisoners have been punished for passing around information from foreign news organisations and trying to sneak out reports of abuse to the United Nations.
Myanmar authorities promised that U Win Tin would be freed with other prisoners in November 2004, but the release did not take place.
Phyo Min Thein is another long-time prisonerhe is a student who was arrested in 1991 for attending a rally in support of Aung San Suu Kyi, who had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Amnesty's report also indicated that since 1989 prison conditions have worsened. Tortureincluding beatings and sleep deprivationis being used systematically.
Confessions extracted as a result of torture have been used in trials, and defendants have not been allowed access to lawyers.
At least three prisoners have died in custody in suspicious circumstances since January, the report said.
Ko Aung Hlaing Win, an NLD member who was detained on May 1, is reported to have died in custody on May 7. Doctors reported to have found injuries consistent with torture on his body.
In addition, at least 22 political prisoners are believed to have been tortured and mistreated after a group of them took part in a hunger strike in Insein prison in April.