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.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
Myanmar yesterday published a parliamentary bill proposing the death sentence for those who detain or violently coerce people into working in online scam centers. Internet fraud factories have flourished in Myanmar, part of Southeast Asia’s scam economy, targeting Internet users worldwide with romance and cryptocurrency investment cons. The multibillion-dollar black market attracts many willing employees, but repatriated foreigners have also reported being trafficked to sites in Myanmar and tortured by scam center operators. The draft legislation would allow capital punishment for “violence, torture, unlawful arrest and detention, or cruel treatment against another person for the purpose of forcing them to commit online scams.” The
RSS