U.N. envoy urges Myanmar to treat ailing prisoners

GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations human rights investigator called on Myanmar's junta on Tuesday to provide urgent medical care to ailing demonstrators and activists imprisoned since its bloody crackdown on dissent last year.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said he had received reports expressing "serious concerns regarding the health conditions of some of the prisoners who require immediate care and specific medication".

He gave no details in a statement urging Burmese authorities to "secure urgent medical treatment for the prisoners".

Pinheiro also expressed dismay that four months after the crackdown, "peaceful demonstrators, political and human rights activists continue to be arrested, detained and sentenced to prison terms under the security laws of Myanmar".

The prosecutions were a "flagrant abuse of people's right to a free and fair trial", according to the Brazilian lawyer and U.S.-based professor acting in the independent post since 2000.

Amnesty International said in a recent report that 96 activists had been arrested since November despite the junta's pledge that the crackdown would stop. The London-based group also had received reports of detainees being tortured.

Pinheiro said after a visit to Myanmar in November that at least 31 people had died and up to 4,000 were arrested in the clashes in which troops and riot police used tear gas, live ammunition and rubber bullets.

Following his report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in December, it called on Myanmar to prosecute those who committed abuses during the crackdown and to free Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners.

The 47-member forum said Pinheiro should be allowed to revisit Myanmar and report to its March 3-28 session. A U.N. official said on Tuesday that there had been no reply to his request for a visa.

Myanmar said in December that only 80 of the nearly 3,000 arrested were still detained for questioning.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay)