The military regime that has controlled Burma since the 1960s has been dubbed “one of the most bestial regimes on the planet”.

In 1988, the last time that protesters held a series of large demonstrations against the ruling junta, an estimated 3,000 unarmed protesters were shot dead when soldier fired on the crowds. Most of the deaths occurred around the Sule Pagoda - the shrine in Rangoon city centre where the current marches culminate each day.

Attempts to set up political alternatives to the junta have been suppressed. Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader and Nobel peace prize-winner, is the best known of more than a thousand political prisoners.

The generals have been accused of using systematic rape, genocide and forced labour as a means of cowing their opponents.

Dissidents face arbitrary arrest and torture, with freedom of assembly, movement, expression and the press sharply restricted, according to Human Rights Watch.

The country’s last election, held in 1990, was won by Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, but the party has been denied power ever since with its leader, Ms Suu Kyi, languishing under house arrest in Rangoon.

In recent years military rulers have taken an increasingly violent stance against ethnic minority groups in the country. Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, reported widespread and systematic violations of human rights amounting to possible crimes against humanity.

More than 16,000 people have been displaced by military action against the Karen tribespeople in eastern Burma, driving whole communities away from their homes and across the border into neighbouring countries. Destruction of houses, enforced disappearances, collective punishments, torture and extrajudicial killings of Karen civilians have increased in the last year according to Amnesty.

John Bercow, Conservative MP, is the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for democracy in Burma, which recently visited the country. He described the military junta as “despicable”.

“The military dictatorship in Burma is notorious for its savage human rights abuses,” he said. “This is one of the most bestial regimes on earth.”

Burma gained independence from Britain in 1947, but democracy lasted only 15 years. Since then, a number of strong-arm leaders have subjected the country to military rule.

A coup d’état in 1962 brought General Ne Win into power, a position he would hold for more than 25 years. Under Ne Win, the army violently suppressed anti-government protests, arresting peaceful demonstrators.

It also presided over a crackdown on some of Burma’s ethnic minorities. In 1978 an estimated 250,000 Rohingya Muslims refugees fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. Attacks against various ethnic groups have continued until now.

With the economy struggling through the 1980s, opposition to military rule grew, culminating in widespread protests in March and June 1988. Democracy campaigners took to the streets in increasing numbers, and the military responded by firing into the crowds, killing an estimated 3,000 demonstrators.

Ne Win had stepped down as president and with the country on verge of a large-scale uprising a military coup saw martial law introduced.

The new military government announced that they were changing the name of the country from the Anglicised Burma to Myanmar.

Multiparty elections were held in May 1990 and Ms Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burmese Second World War hero Aung San, led an umbrella democracy movement to a landslide victory.

But despite winning just under two-thirds of the popular vote and 82 per cent of the parliamentary seats, the ruling junta refused to stand aside. Instead they placed the leader, who had returned to Burma from her home in England to lead the democracy movement, under house arrest.

She was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 but has spent more than 10 years in confinement since then.

In the past 17 years she has been released twice, in 1993 and 2002, but each time she was re-arrested. Since 2003 she has barely been seen in public, but on Saturday she emerged to pray alongside protesting monks near her home.

The country has been ruled under General Than Shwe since the early 1990s, over which time little progress towards democracy has been made despite assurances by the junta that they would install democratic principals.

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found