Leader of the monks will face death penalty!!

Dear all, Please help if you can do anything about following news!! It just came out a few hours ago.

Monk 'faces death for treason'

'I am proud of him' says 29-year-old's mother

A young monk who led the September demonstrations in Rangoon has been charged with treason, according to his family, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post. Treason is a capital crime in Burma. If convicted and executed, 29-year-old U Gambira would be the first monk to be put to death in Burma since the British colonial administration hanged a monk who led a rebellion more than 70 years ago.

U Gambira's mother told the exile magazine Irrawaddy that she had been officially told of the charge against her son, who was hunted down and arrested earlier this month. U Gambira's father, Min Lwin, was also arrested.

The young monk is a leader of the Alliance of All Burma Buddhist Monks, which rallied Burma's clergy behind the September demonstrations. He had been in hiding since the demonstrations were brutally suppressed by Burmese troops and police, but continued to send out messages of defiance—including a vow to continue the anti-regime struggle – until his capture.

"I am proud of him," his mother told the Irrawaddy in a phone call, putting herself at risk of retribution from a regime that commonly takes family members hostage. She was briefly detained, together with some other members of her family, when U Gambira fled in September. U Gambira's brother, Kyaw Kyaw, is still being held.

The regime's practice of taking family members hostage has been roundly condemned by human rights groups, who compare it to Nazi Germany's Sittenhaft, where family members were held accountable for the political 'crimes' of their parents and siblings.

Meanwhile, the authorities announced today that they had freed six political prisoners, including five members of the opposition National League for Democracy. They included a student, That Naung Soe, who had served five years of a 14-year sentence for staging a solo demonstration outside Rangoon's City Hall. The group were released as UN human rights rapporteur Paulo Sergio Pinheiro ended his five-day visit to Burma, during which he visited several jailed detainees and tried to put together a list of those still held.

The regime claims to have freed all but 91 of the 3,000 people arrested during and after the September demonstrations, but independent sources say at least 1,000 are still detained. Pinhiero said he was moderately satisfied with the results of his visit and promised to issue a report within the next two weeks. He said he had been able to visit several detained members of the 88 Generation Student movement, the main motor behind the September demonstrations, but had not met Min Ko Naing, a former political associate of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The outspoken activist was arrested at the start of the September protests and is reportedly in a grave physical condition after repeated sessions of 'hard' interrogation. Pinheiro also failed to meet Burma's longest serving political prisoner, 78-year-old journalist Win Tin, who has served 18 years of a life sentence for his criticism of the regime.

The First Post has posted amateur video footage showing conclusively that the ruling junta's claim that it did not use excessive force to put down the protests are false.