Sentenced to impossibly long prison terms for speaking out against the repressive military government, they face torture, barely edible food, little or no medical care and years in solitary confinement. Some are forbidden to speak for years.
While Western Nations have placed economic sanctions against Myanmar ASEAN and China have continued to promote trade thereby circumventing the trade sanctions relieving the junta of any need for political reform.
The "crimes" prosecuted by the regime include demonstrating, passing on rumors, "undermining the state" and possessing uncensored videotapes. Those who have been jailed include comedians, musicians, artists and a writer convicted of inserting a message in a Valentine's Day poem.
Further Myanmar has on going conflicts with its various ethnic minorities. At one point the government proposed that those groups involved in armed conflict would be incorporated into the military or the boarder patrol which was rejected.
Efforts by Myanmar’s military government to incorporate that country’s numerous armed ethnic groups into a single border guard force will probably lead to further conflict and spawn an influx of refugees into neighbouring countries, analysts and aid workers warn.
Myanmar, with an estimated population of 57.6 million, is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Southeast Asia.
“Tensions are building as SPDC [government] troops are trying to control border crossings and incorporate the ethnic groups into a border guard force,” K’Nyaw Paw, an advocacy team leader of the Forum of Burma’s Community-Based Organizations, said. “We are preparing for more refugees as fighting can happen at any time.”
Given all these problems Myanmar's Ruling Junta is more entrenched than ever before.
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