Myanmar Extends Opposition's Detention

60-year-old lone protestor Ohn Than, left back to camera, holds a placard calling for the convening of parliament as he staged a rare protest in front of plainclothes police officers who were watching the Union Day ceremony held at the National League for Democracy headquarters in Yangon, Myanmar Monday, Feb. 12, 2007. Ohn Than, a former political prisoner who was released from prison last year demanded convening of parliament with elected parliamentarians of the 1990 election. The NLD was holding the 60th anniversary Union Day celebrations to mark the signing of an agreement in 1947 when Myanmar's independence leader General Aung San and ethnic minority leaders agreed together to take independence from Britain. (AP Photo) (AP)

YANGON, Myanmar -- The military government on Tuesday extended by one year the house arrest of the deputy head of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party, despite calls by the party and international community to release him.

Officials from the Home Ministry visited the house of Tin Oo on Tuesday evening to read out the order extending his house arrest, according to a relative who asked not to be identified for fear of government reprisal. Myanmar's junta tightly controls the release of all news.

Detention orders come into force when they are delivered and read to the detainee.

Tin Oo is vice chairman of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, and has been in detention since May 2003, when a pro-government mob attacked the motorcade carrying him and Suu Kyi in northern Myanmar. Both have been in either prison or under house arrest since then.

Tin Oo's detention was previously extended by a year in February 2005 and February 2006. He is not allowed to receive visitors but has been allowed a medical checkup.

Myanmar's ruling military junta in May last year extended Suu Kyi's house arrest by one year, defying international pressure to free the Nobel laureate.

The junta took power in 1988 after violently suppressing mass pro-democracy protests. It held a general election in 1990, but refused to recognize the results after a landslide victory by Suu Kyi's party. Since then, the military's failure to hand over power has caused Myanmar to be ostracized by many Western nations and kept it in conflict with the National League for Democracy.

The extension had been expected, since the military government has shown no signs of wishing to talk with Suu Kyi's party to resolve the country's political deadlock. Tin Oo was one of the party's founders in 1988.

Tin Oo, who like Suu Kyi has previously spent many years under detention, was first held in 2003 in Kale prison, infamous for its harsh conditions, about 435 miles north of Yangon. He was sent to his Yangon home on Feb. 13, 2004, to live under house arrest.

The NLD on Monday urged the junta to release its detained party leaders and other political prisoners. The party issued its statement to mark Union Day, the anniversary of a historic agreement between the country's ethnic groups that led to independence from Britain in 1948 for the country formerly known as Burma.