New Delhi – Dozens of protesters from Myanmar hurled rocks and insults at their country’s embassy in the Indian capital Friday in a show of disdain for upcoming elections called by the nation’s military rulers.The New Delhi-based protesters sprayed anti-junta slogans on the embassy’s outer wall, smashed its nameplate, defaced posters of Myanmar’s military leader and padlocked the gate and doused it with red paint before being taken away by police.

A spokesman for the Burmese Pro-Democracy Movement in India, which organized the protest, said police had detained 68 people, though they were likely to be released later Friday.

This year’s elections in Myanmar, also known as Burma, are part of the ruling junta’s long-announced “roadmap to democracy,” which critics deride as a sham designed to cement the military’s power. A military-backed constitution was approved by a national referendum last May, but the opposition charges that the vote was unfair.

Recently released election laws prevent democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from taking part in the vote because she was convicted of violating her house arrest. Suu Kyi _ whose party won the last election in 1990 but was stopped from taking power by the military _ has been jailed or under detention for 14 of the past 20 years.

India has established deep economic and military ties with Myanmar’s generals over the past decade and has said it believes talking quietly is a better approach than sanctions.
India shifted its policy from supporting Suu Kyi to engaging the junta’s generals in the early 1990s, partly because of a desire for access to Myanmar’s large natural gas reserves.

A date for this year’s election in Myanmar has yet to be set.