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Published on November 24, 2007

The group urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to pay more attention to the fate of female political prisoners in Burma.

The press event was held to release a report titled "Courage to Resist", detailing how women activists in Burma have been hunted down, assaulted, tortured and framed, and their family members threatened and held hostage.

Khin Ohmar from the Burmese Women's Union related the case of two young women who were arrested on September 26 during a raid on monasteries in Rangoon.

"They were forced by authorities to say in front of video cameras that they had sexual affairs with monks," she

said.

Another woman mentioned in the report was taken into custody at the Shwe Daung monastery in Rangoon and tortured to make her confess that she had been having an affair with the abbot.

The WLB said that, in fact, the abbot was her uncle and she had been staying at the temple to look after her elderly paralysed grandmother, the abbot's mother.

Subhatra Bhumiprabhas, The Nation