Burma dissidents urged to protest

The NLD wants the government to recognise the 1990 elections

A dissident student group in Burma is launching a campaign to demand the release of its leaders, who were recently detained by the ruling junta.

The 88 Generation Students has called the protest to mark the resumption of Burma's national convention on Tuesday.

The military government says the convention, boycotted by the main opposition party, will be the first step on a road-map towards democracy.

It says the arrested activists were plotting to destabilise the country.

The military junta has ruled the country since a coup in 1988.

House arrest

The government is re-opening the convention on Tuesday, after an eight-month pause.

More than a thousand carefully-screened delegates are attending the gathering, which has been meeting intermittently for 13 years to draft the constitution.

The convention is being boycotted by Burma's main political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).

The convention was first established with the participation of the NLD, but the party walked out two years later claiming that the military was manipulating the process.

The Burmese government says it is on the path to democracy

The NLD's leader, Nobel peace prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under periodic house arrest since 1989.

She wants Burma's military government to recognise the results of the country's 1990 election, which the NLD won by a landslide.

The Burmese government said it would crush any group that opposed the convention, but leaders of the 88 Generation Students said their demonstration would be peaceful.

Ko Jimmy, a member of the group who was imprisoned for 16 years following the 1988 coup, told Reuters that the organisation had gathered 120,000 names of supporters for a petition, and were encouraging people to wear their white shirts for a week.

"People are becoming more courageous," he said. "They know there is a political and economic crisis. It is the essence of democracy."