A/HRC/7/18 page 11 44. The Special Rapporteur has also received allegations of poor conditions of detention, death in custody, inadequate food and medical treatment, arbitrary arrests without warrants, incommunicado detention, ill-treatment in pretrial detention and defendants who have been denied the right to legal counsel. The Special Rapporteur urges the Government to carry out prompt, full, independent and impartial investigations into these serious allegations. 45. As Myanmar embarks upon new steps of the road map towards democracy, the Special Rapporteur believes it is of the utmost importance to address urgently the issue of political prisoners, whose release would be seen as a gesture of good faith that would help to pave the way to democratization and reconciliation. While, as a matter of principle, the Special Rapporteur continues to advocate for the release of all political prisoners, the Government may wish to consider this question in phases, as suggested by the Special Rapporteur in a letter to the Government in July 2007 and in his latest report to the General Assembly (A/62/223). As a first step, he urges the Government to release all political prisoners at risk, including female political prisoners and those who are elderly or ill. 46. The Special Rapporteur deeply regrets the continued imprisonment of 78-year-old poet and journalist U Win Tin, imprisoned since 1989 and serving a 20-year sentence for “anti-government propaganda and other offences”, for whom the Special Rapporteur expresses serious concern regarding his health; U Win Tin was admitted to the Yangon general hospital on 22 January 2008 for a hernia operation. The Special Rapporteur appeals once more to the Government to release the country’s longest-serving political prisoner, who should have been released in July 2005. According to reports, at least 36 detainees in Myanmar are aged over 60, including NLD members Hla Myint Than, Kyaw San and Maj-Gen Sao Hso Ten, president of the Shan State Peace Council. To date, prisoners have not received any visits from representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) since the beginning of 2006. 47. The Special Rapporteur deplores the continued detention of NLD and other leaders still serving draconian arrest terms, such as the NLD General Secretary Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest, for whom he reiterates his request for immediate and unconditional release. The Special Rapporteur would like to express his concerns regarding the deteriorating health conditions of Shan NLD leader Khun Htun Oo, arrested in 2003 and sentenced to 96 years of imprisonment, suffering since December 2007 from hepatitis B without proper access to medical treatment. His family is allowed to visit him every three months in Putao prison. The Special Rapporteur calls on the authorities to release him, and pending his release to supply medical treatment at the hospital and transfer him to the jail in Yangon, where his family lives. 48. The terms of detention of other prominent NLD leaders, including Tin Oo, Than Nyein and May Win Myint, were also extended. Several leaders of ethnic political parties have been detained and sentenced to extraordinarily severe prison terms of 100 years or more. C. Implementation of anti-terror laws 49. The authorities have for many years justified the imprisonment of hundreds of students, politicians, doctors, lawyers, housewives, farmers and others on the basis that they were seeking to cause “unrest”. Such arrests and sentences have been made possible by vaguely worded security laws, which allow excessively broad interpretation by the authorities of what constitutes