By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 2010; 1:33 PM

Burma's government on Thursday released a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Montgomery Village after six months of sometimes brutal captivity.

Nyi Nyi Aung is a democracy advocate who was born in Burma and had traveled there often under his legal name Kyaw Zaw Lwin, which allowed him to visit family and work with the underground democracy movement. But last summer Nyi Nyi Aung helped deliver a petition to senior United Nations officials with 680,000 signatures calling for the release of all political prisoners in Burma and bringing new attention to himself. He was seized in September at the airport when he tried to enter the country.

A month ago a court had sentenced Nyi Nyi Aung to five years of hard labor for forging his identity, possessing undeclared foreign currency and failing to renounce his Burmese citizenship. The government gave no explanation for his sudden release.

''In one way, I'm really happy, but on the other side, all my friends and my family are still in prison," Nyi Nyi Aung told reporters when he landed in Bangkok. ''That's my only message.''

The 40-year-old Nyi Nyi Aung was one of the leading organizers of demonstrations against the junta in 1988 and fled the country after a violent crackdown, eventually settling in the United States as a political refugee in 1993. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002 and earned a college degree in computer science, but he also remained deeply involved in Burmese democracy efforts.

Nyi Nyi Aung's mother and sister are serving prison sentences of five years and 65 years, respectively, for their involvement in 2007 anti-government demonstrations known as the Saffron Revolution. At times during captivity, Nyi Nyi Aung was denied food and medical treatment or kept in solitary confinement in a cell for military dogs, supporters said.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, is regarded as one of the world's most oppressive nations, ruled by generals who have enriched themselves while much of the country remains desperately poor. The National League for Democracy, the party of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide electoral victory in 1990, but the military leadership refused to accept it. Since then, she has been under house arrest for most of the time, and more than 2,000 of her supporters are held in jail.

The Obama administration, which has sought to improve relations with the military junta that controls the Southeast Asian nation, had kept a relatively low profile on Nyi Nyi Aung's case, angering his supporters, and his fiancee Wa Wa Kyaw, who is also a Maryland resident. In an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal last month, she implored Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama to take a public stance. "Neither your words nor your actions show that you take my fiancé's imprisonment seriously," she wrote.

In a statement Thursday, Wa Wa Kyaw thanked several officials at the State Department -- but not Clinton -- and a long list of senators and members of Congress for their efforts to secure her fiance's release.

There are signs the Obama administration is adjusting its stance toward Burma after 14 months of largely fruitless efforts at outreach. The administration had hoped to persuade the junta to open up elections scheduled for this year to democracy activists, including Suu Kyi, but rules announced this month would bar political prisoners from participating. The State Department condemned the rules in unusually strong terms, saying the new law "makes a mockery of the democratic process and ensures that the upcoming elections will be devoid of credibility."