Suu Kyi party member gets life for protest

The Asian Age
Rangoon, April 3: A veteran activist who staged a solo protest in 2007 against Burma’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 Ms Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, was found guilty of demonstrating outside the US embassy in Rangoon, said Aung Thein, who will represent the convicted man at his appeal.

In Burma, a life sentence is a maximum of 20 years in prison, Mr Aung Thein said. Mr Ohn Than, who is in his mid-60s, was sentenced on Tuesday at a trial inside Rangoon’s Insein Prison, he said. Mr 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.

The US and British governments are among the military regime’s top critics. (AP)