BANGKOK, Oct 26 (IPS) - When it comes to throwing pro-democracy activists in jail, Burma’s military regime does not discriminate between the sexes. The junta treats women and men with equal measure of abuse.

The latest to be condemned to a long term in prison is Win Mya Mya, a woman in her 50s who served as a committee member of the opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), in the central region of Mandalay. She was given a 12-year jail sentence on Friday for her role in the September 2007 anti-government protests led by thousands of Buddhist monks.

Five other leading NLD members from the same area -- all men -- were punished likewise, with jail terms ranging from eight to 13 years. They were accused of violating the laws 505 (B) and 153 (A), which makes it an offence to write, rumour or report ‘’by words, either spoken or written, or by signs’’ material that may ‘’cause fear or alarm to the public,’’ induce acts ‘’against the state or against the public tranquility,’’ or ''promotes hatred between different classes (of persons).’’

‘’Their trials were held in a court inside the Mandalay prison,’’ says Bo Kyi, a co-founder of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a group championing the rights of Burmese political prisoners based along the Thai-Burma border. ‘’The verdicts were also given inside that prison compound.’’

It was a secret trial aimed to reduce public scrutiny, he added during a telephone interview. ‘’The families of the accused were not permitted in the court when the verdict was given. The authorities didn’t want the public inside the court.’’

The date of this verdict could not have been more revealing. It confirmed how little the junta cares about international pressure against the harsh measures directed at political activists in Burma. Oct. 24 marked 13 years that the country’s pro-democracy leader and head of the NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been detained.

There were multiple calls from governments in Europe and the United States and many regional and international human rights groups for the junta to free Suu Kyi, the country’s most well-known political prisoner. The Nobel Peace laureate’s current stretch of house arrest in the former capital of Rangoon began at the end of May 2003.

‘’As of Oct. 24, 2008, Aung San Suu Kyi has spent a total of 13 years under house arrest. We again call upon the Burmese regime to immediately and unconditionally release her and the more than 2,000 political prisoners it holds,’’ said the U.S. State Department in a statement.

Suu Kyi and new political prisoners like Win Mya Mya are among the victims a U.N. human rights envoy for Burma had in mind when he told the U.N. General Assembly that the South-east Asian nation has a system in dire need of reforms before the planned 2010 elections.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, an Argentine lawyer, called for changes in the system that has crippled political and civil liberties in Burma for decades. ‘’These include revision of domestic laws to ensure their compliance with human rights; progressive release of all prisoners of conscience and reform of the military and independent judiciary,’’ reports ‘The Irrawaddy’, a current affairs magazine published by Burmese journalists living in exile in Thailand.

Quintana’s report to the General Assembly on Thursday was shaped by the information he gathered during his first visit to Burma in August. ‘’The government didn’t know me ... it was difficult to go into prison,’’ he is reported as having said according to The Irrawaddy.

But he did succeed in having three hours of ‘’private meetings with detainees,’’ adds the journal. ‘’The prisoners were very open with me. It gave me a lot of sense of what was going on in the country,’’ he said.

Burmese jails now hold 178 women prisoners of conscience, a three-fold increase from the 53 imprisoned female political activists in August 2006.

‘’During the [September 2007 anti-government street protests] more than 157 women, including 10 nuns were detained. Nineteen women disappeared,’’ reveals ALTSEAN, a regional human rights body, in a note released this week. ‘’Daw Ponnami, an 80-year-old nun at Thitsatharaphu Monastery, partially paralysed by a stroke, was arrested and defrocked, accused of ‘causing offence to the Buddhist religion’, and remains incarcerated.’’

The other nuns who have been defrocked and jailed in this predominantly Buddhist country include 70-year-old Htay Yi and 64-year-old Pyinyar Theingi. The jails also hold such women as Su Su Nway, a 37-year-old labour rights activist, Nilar Thein, a 35-year-old university student leader, and Ein Khine Oo, a 24-year-old journalist.

Teenagers have not been spared either. In early August, the regime arrested Ni Ni May Myint, a 19-year-old member of the NLD, and had her shackled. She and 50 others had gathered on a street in a town in the Arakan state, in western Burma, to pray for the students who had died during a brutal crackdown of the pro-democracy uprising in August 1988.

‘’I am worried about Ni Ni May Myint. The [prison] authorities will treat her harshly the way they treat other female activists in jail,’’ says Khin Cho Myint, a 36-year-old former student of Rangoon University and a former political prisoner. ‘’Women face a lot of verbal abuse and mental torture and it can be very frightening.’’

‘’There were times when women were kept in isolation and not given things they wanted for their health and sanitary needs,’’ she added in an interview. ‘’I faced this during the five years and nine months I was in prison. I was penalised for being a student activist.’’

But some female prisoners of conscience have faced worse, ALTSEAN reveals. ‘’In August 2006, Nyunt Yin died in Insein Prison at the age of 60. She had served 16 years of a life sentence because of her involvement in the 1988 uprising. She was denied medical treatment for a heart condition.’’