More than 30 Burmese activists were sentenced to prison or hard labour by the country’s ruling junta last week as part of an accelerated crack-down on political dissent that has been unfolding since late October in Myanmar.

The sentences included sixty-five years in prison each for 14 former student activists, twenty-and-a-half years for a blogger, twelve-and-a-half years for a labour leader, six-and-a-half years for five Buddhist monks and two years for a poet.

Burmese generals violently crushed a peaceful, monk-led protest movement calling for economic and political reforms last year. Hopes that an influx of foreign aid - dispersed after Cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy Delta last spring - would promote greater respect for human rights on the part of the junta were dashed by the rash of detentions that accelerated in late October. Last week, two journalists were jailed, while three lawyers representing political activists have also been sentenced to prison.

One of Asia’s poorest nations, roughly one-third of Burmese civilians now live below the poverty line.

Economic sanctions by the U.S. and European Union have had little effect on governmental policy thus far. There was no response to the expressions of condemnation issued this week from the U.S. and UK.

“These last few weeks show a more concentrated crackdown on dissent clearly aimed at intimidating the population,” said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “These peaceful activists should not be on trial in the first place, let alone thrown in prison for years after unfair trials.”

Under the control of a military junta since 1962, Burma has scheduled multi-party elections in 2010. The polls are considered a charade, however, by many international observers, who note that the leader of the main opposition party, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is under house arrest and is barred from participating.

“Burma’s leaders are clearing the decks of political activists,” said Pearson, “before they announce the next round of sham political reforms.”

One Burmese exile group based in Thailand estimates that 2,120 Burmese have been incarcerated for their political activism, nearly double the number who were in prison before last year’s anti-government demonstrations.