Bangkok: U.S.-based activists have launched a campaign to send 6,000 birthday cards to Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained by the country’s military leaders for nearly two years, the group said in a statement.

The cards, together with protests planned at Myanmar embassies around the world, are to call attention to Suu Kyi’s plight on June 19, her 60th birthday, the U.S. Campaign for Burma said. Myanmar is also known as Burma.

“While this would be an occasion of celebration for most people, Aung San Suu Kyi will spend the day under house arrest, where she has been for the majority of the past 16 years,” said the statement, seen Thursday.

Suu Kyi led a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally suppressed by the military and has been detained under house arrest for most of the time since.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was most recently arrested in May 2003 after a clash between her supporters and a pro-junta mob in northern Myanmar. She was detained at an unknown location for several months and later taken to her home where she has since been held under house arrest.

The ruling junta has shown no sign of releasing Suu Kyi despite repeated calls from Western governments and international organizations.

The U.S. Campaign for Burma, which includes American human rights activists and exiled Myanmar dissidents, said the cards would be delivered to the Myanmar Embassy in Washington, D.C., during a demonstration there and at some 60 other embassies.

The group has asked people from around the world to mail it birthday cards for Suu Kyi.

The campaign, the statement said, is similar to that launched in 1988 by activists and politicians when the then-70-year-old Nelson Mandela was imprisoned by South Africa’s apartheid regime.