Last month, U Gambira, a leader of the All Burma Monks Alliance, received a 68-year sentence for his role in organizing last year's Saffron Revolution, in which tens of thousands of Buddhist monks and political activists peacefully protested the junta's brutal regime.

Myanmar comedian Zarganar was sentenced to 59 years in jail by one of the military junta's secret courts. His crime? Publicly criticizing the regime's slow response to Cyclone Nargis.

And poet Saw Wai received a lighter sentence: a ``mere'' two years. His crime? Penning an eight-line Valentine's Day poem that contained a hidden message.

Putting the first letters of each line of the poem together read ``Power Crazy Than Shwe'' in Myanmarese, mocking the junta's leader. Two years in prison. That's three months per line. 9.4 days per word.

Zarganar, U Gambira, and Saw Wai are three of the approximately 2,100 political prisoners currently held in jails in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Nearly half of them were arrested in the past year alone.

Recently, the junta's courts have begun sentencing these protesters and even some of their lawyers, who have been courageously defending them in closed-door hearings. More than 20 members of the 88 Generation Students Group received 65 years each.

That's 65 years spent in jails described by survivors as being filled with rats, filth, and disease; where many of the protesting monks are stripped of their religious garb and kept in solitary confinement; where prisoners are commonly tortured and allowed a few sips of water each day.

Meanwhile, a woman known affectionately by her people as ``The Lady'' is held in isolation, cut off from virtually all communication. This year, Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Myanmar's National League for Democracy and the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate, begins her 14th year under house arrest.

On 3 Dec., 112 former presidents and prime ministers from more than 50 countries around the world, including all living former British prime ministers ― Tony Blair, John Major, and Margaret Thatcher ― united in sending an unprecedented letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, urging him to personally visit Myanmar by the end of 2008 to secure the release of the junta's political prisoners.

Other luminaries on the letter included Corazon Aquino, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Kim Dae-jung, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vaclav Havel, John Howard, Jose Ramos-Horta, Mary Robinson, and Lech Walesa, among others.

This historic outpouring of global support reflects deep international frustration with the failure of U.N. engagement to secure democratization ― or indeed, any substantive reforms at all ― since Myanmar's democratic elections 18 years ago.

Since the military junta seized control of Myanmar in 1962, the regime has accumulated one of the worst human rights records in modern history. Despite the country's rich natural resources, Myanmar's 48 million inhabitants are among the most impoverished in the world, with virtually no access to healthcare or other basic services.

More than 3,300 villages have been destroyed since 1996 as the military wages a relentless campaign of murder, torture and rape against ethnic minorities. More than one million refugees have fled the country, and 600,000 internally displaced people struggle to subsist in primitive jungle conditions.

In the month following Cyclone Nargis, which left 130,000 dead, the junta refused access to international humanitarian organizations, depriving thousands of Myanmarese of essential emergency assistance.

Myanmar's suffering has not gone entirely unnoticed. The U.N. General Assembly, Commission on Human Rights, and, recently, the, Human Rights Council, have adopted more than 30 resolutions on Myanmar, many calling for the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.

Furthermore, in October 2007, the U.N. Security Council issued a unanimous presidential statement urging the junta to cease its repression, address its numerous human rights abuses, and provide for the quick release of all political prisoners.

This year's budget request for the U.N. special envoy to Myanmar even listed the release of all political prisoners as a key goal of 2008. And yet, the number of Myanmarese political prisoners has nearly doubled in the past year.

The failure of prior U.N. responses underscores the urgent need to couple words with action. A crisis of this magnitude demands, and deserves, the immediate and personal attention of the U.N. secretary general.

Furthermore, should the junta continue to defy the international community, decisive steps should be taken. Since Than Shwe's regime has refused to respond to the U.N. Security Council's call for change, the council should, at the very least, discuss a binding resolution that bans global arms shipments to Myanmar's military regime.

Such an arms embargo would significantly weaken the military regime while in no way hurting the Myanmarese people.

``Please use your liberty to promote ours,'' Aung San Suu Kyi has often said. It's past time the world listened.

Jared Genser and Nicole Carelli serve as pro bono counsel to Aung San Suu Kyi with Freedom Now in Washington, D.C.