Courts in military-ruled Burma sentenced at least seven democracy activists to prison Monday, continuing a crackdown that saw about 70 people jailed last week.
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Four student activists, two members of the opposition National League for Democracy party and a former party member who has become a prominent independent activist received jail terms of 6 1/2 to 12 1/2 years at closed-door trials inside Yangon's Insein Prison, league spokesman Nyan Win said.
Authorities last week sentenced about 70 opposition activists, writers, musicians and Buddhist monks to jail terms ranging from 2 1/2 years to 65 years, with many of them transferred to prisons in remote areas Sunday and Monday.
The courts' actions seemed designed to keep them jailed long past elections scheduled for 2010, to be held under a new constitution that critics claim is designed to perpetuate the military's dominant role in politics.
The US government criticised the military junta for arresting peaceful activists and putting them on trial. "The United States strongly condemns the regime's persistent repression of its people for exercising basic freedoms," White House press secretary Dan Perino said.
Many of those sentenced were arrested following mass democracy protests that were crushed by the ruling junta in September 2007. According to UN estimates, at least 31 people were killed and thousands were detained. Many fled the country or went underground.
Nyan Win said Htin Kyaw, a former member of the party, was given a 12 1/2-year sentence.
Htin Kyaw, 45, who was detained repeatedly in 2007 for organising demonstrations criticising the government's economic policies, has been in custody since August last year, when he and another activist were about to stage a protest at a busy intersection in downtown Yangon.
Other activists sentenced Monday included economics student Sithu Maung and three members of the illegal All Burma Federation of Student Union.
Amnesty International and other human rights groups say the junta holds more than 2,100 political prisoners, up sharply from nearly 1,200 in June 2007, before the democracy demonstrations.
The prisoners include Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the National League for Democracy, who has spent more than 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest.
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