YANGON, June 8 (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta has detained 11 HIV patients in a hospital for holding a prayer vigil seeking the release of a prominent health activist, the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) said on Friday. The group have been confined at the Waybargi Infectious Diseases Hospital on the outskirts of the former Burma's main city, Yangon, NLD spokesman U Myint Thein said. "The authorities made necessary preparations in advance at the hospital to confine them in isolation as 'political patients'," he said. "These 11 people had been holding prayers at pagodas for the release of Phyu Phyu Thinn since May 23." Phyu Phyu Thinn, a 35-year-old NLD member and activist who has suggested Myanmar's HIV/AIDS crisis is far worse than the junta admits, was arrested on May 21 for organising a prayer campaign for the release of NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi, whose party won a landslide election victory in 1990 only to be denied power by the military, has spent more than 11 of the last 17 years in prison or under house arrest. Her latest period of detention began in mid-2003. UNAIDS described the HIV/AIDS situation in Myanmar in 2005 as "a very serious epidemic", with 360,000 men, women and children, or 1.3 percent of adults, estimated to be infected. Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962, during which time its economy has collapsed. Washington describes the current junta, believed to be holding 1,100 political prisoners, as an "outpost of tyranny" and a threat to international security.
