Myanmar jails dissidents for 65 years

[Ichingcarpenter]

Source: reuters

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta sentenced at least 11 dissidents involved in monk-led protests last year to 65 years in jail on Tuesday, opposition figures said, a major blow to the pro-democracy movement before a 2010 election.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) and exiled dissidents in Thailand said the group, all of whom played a role in another brutally suppressed uprising in 1988, were sentenced at a closed-door hearing in Yangon's notorious Insein prison.

The group included Ko Jimmy and his wife, Nilar Thein, who had to abandon her four-month-old daughter when she went into hiding during the August 2007 crackdown over fuel price protests.

Nilar Thein was arrested in September after more than a year on the run.

The United Nations says at least 31 people were killed when the former Burma's military rulers sent in troops to end the mass demonstrations led by columns of shaven-headed Buddhist monks, the biggest challenge to military rule in 20 years.

Nine other democracy activists from the so-called "88 Generation Students Group" were sentenced to six months in jail last month for contempt of court when they tried to argue their trials should be not be held behind closed doors.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4AA2B220081111?rpc=64

[DUlover2909]

1. Can the CIA do something good for once when Obama is elected?

Get the CIA to make problems for those assholes.

[al bupp]

2. The brutal and corrupt regime in Myanmar must become a prior ty

The next Secretary of State should help organize international action to address conditions in that country. Certainly China (and probably Russia) will object to such an effort, so it will not be easy.