Supporters of Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi gathered on Thursday to mark the 20th anniversary of their dissolved party’s unrecognised victory in the country’s last elections.

About 100 of her supporters met at the Rangoon house of Tin Oo, vice chairman of the now-defunct National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the polls on 27 May 1990, by a landslide.

But the ruling generals in Burma, which has been military-run since 1962, never allowed Suu Kyi and her party to take power and she has spent most of the past two decades locked up in jail or under house arrest.

The first elections since then are due later this year but the NLD was forcibly dissolved after refusing to meet a 6 May deadline to re-register as a political party – a move that would have forced it to expel its leader.

“The NLD has struggled through very rough situations in the past two decades,” 83-year-old Tin Oo said during a tea party for the gathering.

“We said we would continue with social service work, but this is also a kind of politics,” he said.

The group marked the anniversary by pledging educational assistance for family members of Burma’s political prisoners and by planting trees inside Tin Oo’s compound.

“We used to hold the anniversary at the headquarters every year, but we have to hold it here because of the situation. Of course we want to hold it at our headquarters,” pro-democracy activist Phyu Phyu Thin told AFP.

“The NLD is still standing. We will keep trying until we are allowed to work officially,” she said.

“We are working with our spirit. We will continue working for the future with this political spirit,” added Mya Mya Yee, another NLD supporter.

Under election legislation unveiled in March, anyone serving a prison term is banned from being a member of a political party and parties that fail to obey the rule will be abolished.

A faction within the NLD has said it would form a new political party, to be called the National Democratic Force, to run in the election.

The move came amid signs of a split between older, hardline former NLD members and younger, more moderate figures who opposed the boycott decision.