On August 11, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar was found guilty of violating her house arrest. Why? Because an uninvited man spent two nights at her home in May. The man, an American, refused to leave and is now being held in prison.

Because of this, 18 months were added to her current sentence, of which she’s already spent the majority of 13 years in house arrest.

Suu Kyi, a prisoner of conscience, doesn’t deserve the sentence in the first place. You may be familiar with the pro-democracy leader’s work, her attempt to win democracy for Burma, the sham of a trial that was used to imprison her and the gross human rights violation that the entire past two decades have been to the extraordinary woman.

Myanmar’s military junta’s extension of Suu Kyi’s imprisonment is an obvious tactic to keep her out of running for next year’s presidential election. Authoritarian leaders like Than Shwe, the general of the junta, need to be implored to respect human rights by both world leaders as well as the international community.

According to Amnesty International, an international campaign to release such prisoners can and does work. Only last year, ma Khin Khin Leh, also a prisoner of conscience in Myanmar, was released following a global outcry. Tens of thousands of letters were mailed on her behalf, and though the dictatorship proved to be repressive, it was not deaf. If Khin Leh can be released—and if journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee can be freed from North Korea!—surely Aung San Suu Kyi can attain her freedom as well.

Such politically-motivated sentences should not be tolerated. They fail to meet legal standards both internationally as well as within Myanmar’s system itself, and therefore should not continue to hold Suu Kyi as a prisoner. The United Nations has already declared her imprisonment to be illegal; her incarceration is both unwarranted and unjust.

To call for the immediate and unconditional release of Aung San Suu Kyi today, click here. There is not a moment to lose. Along with Suu Kyi, more than 2,100 other political prisoners are being held by the junta today. These are people who, like you and I, exercised their voices and tried to make their country better—peacefully and passionately. Only, instead of being able to engage in this act freely, they were incarcerated. Please consider writing in their behalf as well.