The United Nations human rights chief has called for the Burmese military regime to release all political prisoners.

On October 2nd, Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, welcomed the junta’s release of seven political prisoners, but called for more similar releases. “I urge the Government to release them all as soon as possible,” the UN quoted Pillay as saying.

Pillay highlighted in particular the case of Aung San Suu Kyi. The leader of the prominent opposition group the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Nobel laureate has been under house arrest for twelve years, and Pillay noted that she has served a sentence far exceeding that of many hardened criminals.

The night before the release of Pillay’s statement, for unknown reasons, the junta arrested key opposition activist U Ohn Kyaing. He is a close political ally to Aung San Suu Kyi and was elected to parliament in the 1990 election, which was later annulled. He is also a former journalist and was released from prison in 2005 after serving fifteen years of seventeen year sentence.

“We don’t yet know what is behind the arrest,” NLD spokesman U Nyan Win told IMNA. Tate Naing, secretary of the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, speculated that Ohn Kyaing was arrested because he led an NLD delegation offering assistance to survivors of Cyclone Nargis, which devastated wide swathes of the Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008.

Tate Naing went on to predict that the coming year will see the increased arrest of political activists as the regime positions itself to dominate upcoming elections. The elections, scheduled for 2010, will be Burma’s first since the annulment of the NLD’s landslide victory in 1990.

The regime regularly arrests people for political reasons. According to AAPP records, 2,123 political prisoners are currently held in regime prisons and 20 to 40 more are arrested each month. “The authorities are breaking their own laws,” added Tate Naing. “They arrest people that should be free.”