Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was absent for the fifth consecutive year from a ceremony Thursday to mark the death of her father, Burma's independence hero, as the military junta beefed up security for the event.
Suu Kyi's father, Gen Aung San, led the struggle against British colonialists and later the occupying Japanese forces during World War II before eventually negotiating the country's split from Britain.
But on July 19, 1947, six months before Burma was to gain its formal independence, he was gunned down along with six Cabinet ministers and two officials. A jealous political rival, former Prime Minister U Saw, was tried and hanged for arranging their assassination.
The anniversary of his death is marked each year as Martyr's Day at a mausoleum near the famous Shwedagon pagoda in Rangoon.
Culture Minister Maj-Gen Khin Aung Myint led the official ceremony, placing wreaths at the mausoleum, followed by relatives of the slain leaders.
Suu Kyi used to lay three baskets of flowers at her father's tomb every year but she has been absent since her detention in May 2003.
Suu Kyi's estranged elder brother, US citizen Aung San Oo, and his wife laid a wreath at the father's tomb on her behalf.
In 2005, the government announced that Suu Kyi had been invited to lay a wreath at her father's tomb but that she told them she did not want to attend the ceremony.
In an apparent effort to pre-empt enthusiastic supporters from going to Suu Kyi's house where she remains in detention, the junta expanded a roadblock across the road.
Security was also beefed up in the city.
Armed policemen at road junctions and hundreds of pro-junta plainclothes security officials were stationed near the headquarters of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy where the party held a private ceremony to commemorate Martyr's Day.
At the ceremony, party members called for the release of Suu Kyi as well as other political prisoners and urged the junta to reopen party offices that have been closed since 2003.
About 350 people including party members, diplomats and representatives from the United Nations attended the ceremony as security officials watched and videotaped the event from across the street.
Unlike last year, authorities allowed NLD members to visit the mausoleum to pay tribute to Gen Aung San.
The NLD members are allowed to go there in groups of 10 or 12 and were permitted to wear T-shirts bearing photos of Suu Kyi or Gen Aung San.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner has spent almost 12 of the past 18 years in confinement. She was last detained by the government on May 30, 2003, after her motorcade was attacked by a pro-junta mob in northern Burma. She has been held at her Rangoon residence and is not allowed visitors or telephone contact with the outside world.
Martyr's Day was an important event in Burma's calendar for years, but has been gradually downgraded since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising, which was crushed by the junta.
Since 1996, official newspapers have abandoned an earlier tradition of publishing commemorative Martyr's Day biographical sketches of Aung San along with photos of slain leaders and articles extolling them.
However, private local news journal carried articles and special features about those killed.
