AFP: Protests for Myanmar democracy leader 25 October

Activists in Australia and the Philippines are continuing to call for global action to pressure Myanmar's military junta to move towards democracy and to free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Prime Minister Soe Win, 58, presumed to have been the architect of an attack on supporters of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2003, was believed to be suffering from leukaemia and had been treated for several months in a top Singapore hospital. Video shot by pro-democracy activists in Myanmar, showing September's monk-led demonstrations and the crackdown that followed, has been smuggled out of the country.

UN's Ban says will meet Myanmar junta leader BANGKOK UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he would meet Myanmar's junta leader Senior General Than Shwe during a visit starting Thursday to convince the generals to accept a wider cyclone relief effort. "I will meet with senior government officials, including Senior General Than Shwe," Ban told reporters shortly after landing Wednesday in neighbouring Thailand. Images and soundbites

The latest demonstrations come as Myanmar prepares to hold a state funeral for its Prime Minister Soe Win, believed to have died from leukaemia on Friday.

Human Rights Watch says the army is in crisis after the recent crackdown on pro-democracy protests. It needs to plug gaps left by retirement and desertions which, according to internal junta documents, are said to be at least 3,500 soldiers every three months.

Myanmar is pushing ahead with a constitutional referendum in cyclone-struck areas despite the ongoing humanitarian crisis there, with two million people still desperately in need of food, shelter and medicine. The vote was held elsewhere in the nation three weeks ago, a week after the storm hit. It is the first vote held in Myanmar since 1990, when opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party won in a landslide but she was placed under house arrest; its approval will bar the Nobel Peace Prize winner from ever holding office. Images of the voting from state-run Myanmar television.

Senior General Than Shwe, who heads Myanmar's ruling junta, made his first visit Sunday to an area hit by Cyclone Nargis more than two weeks ago, state television announced. It showed footage of the secretive 75-year-old leader visiting relief camps on the outskirts of Yangon.

After more than two hours of talks with the leader of Myanmar's secretive military junta, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he won to a pledge that all foreign disaster experts would finally be allowed into the country, three weeks after the cyclone that has left at least 133,000 people dead or missing.

After Buddhist monks led Myanmar's biggest street protests in nearly two decades, many had hoped for change. But those hopes were dashed by the military crackdown in which at least 31 people were killed. More than six months on, the country is more isolated than ever, and images like these -- showing a nation of rampant poverty and a wealthy elite -- increasingly rare.