The head of Myanmar’s military government granted amnesty to about 4,900 prisoners to mark the country’s traditional new year, state-run media reported yesterday, but it was not immediately clear how many were political detainees locked up for opposing army rule.
Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the ruling military council, pardoned 4,893 prisoners, MRTV reported.
Thirteen foreigners would also be released and deported from Myanmar, it said in a separate statement.
Photo: AP
Other prisoners received reduced sentences, except for those convicted of serious charges such as murder and rape, or those jailed on charges under other security acts.
If the freed detainees contravene the law again they would have to serve the remainder of their original sentence in addition to any new sentence, according to the terms of their release.
Mass amnesties on the holiday are not unusual in Myanmar. The releases were to occur at prisons nationwide.
Dozens of relatives and friends of prisoners waited early yesterday outside the main gate of Insein Prison, on the northern outskirts of Yangon, the country’s largest city. No details were available about the number of prisoners released from Insein as part of the amnesty.
Myanmar has been under military rule since Feb. 1, 2021, when its army ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government. The takeover was met with massive nonviolent resistance, which has since become a widespread armed struggle.
The country is now in civil war.
As of Friday last week, 22,197 political detainees, including Aung San Suu Kyi, were in detention, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an independent organization that keeps detailed tallies of arrests and casualties linked to the nation’s political conflicts.
Many political detainees had been held on a charge of incitement, a catch-all offense widely used to arrest critics of the government or military, and punishable by up to three years in prison.
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