YANGON (Myanmar): Su Su Nway was orphaned as a child and has a heart condition. But that hasn’t kept her from challenging one of the most brutal regimes on earth.

The soft-spoken 34-year-old, who lives just outside Yangon, thought it was wrong that local officials forced her and her neighbours to work repairing a road without pay. So she took them to court under a 1999 law, never enforced, that banned compulsory labour.

To the surprise of many, a judge convicted the town chairman and a deputy last year and sentenced them to eight months in prison. It was the first time a government official had been jailed in Myanmar, for the widespread practice of making citizens work for free.

But in the end, Su Su Nway paid a bigger price. The new town chairman accused her of harassing him by shouting and swearing at him. She denied the charge, insisting, “As a Burmese Buddhist girl, I would not do such things as they said I did.” But she was found guilty by a different judge of ‘insulting and disrupting a government official on duty’. She was sentenced to 18 months.

“That this would be grounds for an intimidation case is ludicrous,” said Richard Horsey, the chief representative in Myanmar of the United Nations’ International Labour Organisation. “She’s about five feet tall with a heart condition. The idea that she would yell obscenities and that village leaders are going to be intimidated is highly unlikely.”

In a country where much of the population has passively accepted authoritarian rule, Su Su Nway has become a standard-bearer for human rights, a young woman willing to defy the military regime that has run Myanmar for longer than she has been alive.

After taking the mayor to court, she challenged the regime further by speaking out on the Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition radio service that is operated from Norway and broadcasts in Myanmar despite strict censorship laws.

“They want to send me to prison because they are afraid of me,” she told the radio service shortly before her imprisonment in October. “I have no responsibility, no power and no position. They plot against a common girl, a disease sufferer, and sue her because they are afraid. If they are afraid like that, our side is winning.”

With her arrest, Su Su Nway joined the more than 1,100 political prisoners in Myanmar. —Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service