The head of Myanmar’s military government granted amnesty to around 4,900 prisoners to mark the country's traditional new year, state-run media reported Thursday, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many were political detainees locked up for opposing army rule.
Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the ruling military council, pardoned 4,893 prisoners, MRTV reported. Thirteen foreigners will also be released and deported from Myanmar, it said in a separate statement.
Other prisoners received reduced sentences, except for those convicted of serious charges such as murder and rape, or those jailed on charges under various other security acts.
If the freed detainees violate the law again they will have to serve the remainder of their original sentences 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 will occur at prisons nationwide.
Dozens of relatives and friends of prisoners waited early Thursday 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.
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Some 22,197 political detainees, including Suu Kyi, were in detention as of last Friday, 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.
This year’s celebrations of Thingyan, the New Year’s holiday, were more reserved than usual due to a nationwide grieving period following a devastating earthquake last month. The country is struggling to recover from the 7.7 magnitude quake on March 28 that hit its central heartland, killing about 3,725 people and leveling structures from new condos to ancient pagodas.
In a New Year’s speech broadcast Thursday, Min Aung Hlaing said his government will carry out reconstruction and rehabilitation measures in the quake-affected areas as quickly as possible.
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He also reaffirmed plans to hold a general election by the end of the year and called on opposition groups fighting the army to resolve the conflicts in political ways.
During the holiday, the violent struggle between the army and pro-democracy forces continued. There were armed clashes in the countryside but the number of casualties was unclear.