Myanmar’s junta pardons more than 7,000 prisoners

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Myanmar’s military rulers ordered the release of 7,012 inmates, including some political prisoners, in an Independence Day amnesty Wednesday.
Detainees held in prisons and police stations across the country had their sentences reduced in accordance with Section 401 of the Penal Code, according to junta news releases received by RFA.
Wednesday marks the 75th anniversary of the end of British colonial rule.
Lawyers, who wished to remain anonymous, told RFA some political prisoners had already returned to their homes early Wednesday, while families of others were still waiting outside prisons.
Minister of Religious Affairs under the National League for Democracy-led government, Thura Aung Ko, was released from Yangon’s Insein Prison Tuesday night. He had been serving a 12-year sentence for alleged corruption. Police officers and soldiers took him to his home in Yangon, his daughter wrote on her Facebook page.
The National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in 2020 elections but the NLD-led government was overthrown in a February, 2021 coup. The junta has arrested many party members along with the country’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was sentenced to a total of 33 years in prison, and President Win Myint who faces 12 years behind bars.
There was no indication that Suu Kyi or Win Myint were included in the amnesty.

Author Than Myint Aung shortly after her release from Insein Prison, Yangon on Jan. 4, 2023. Credit: RFA
Writers freed
Among those released from Yangon’s Insein prison were authors Than Myint Aung and Htin Lin Oo, a Yangon lawyer, who didn’t want to be named for safety reasons, told RFA.
Than Myint Aung is a well-known fiction writer who also worked for many charities in Myanmar. She had been serving a three-year sentence for alleged incitement. Htin Lin Oo was also sentenced to three years in prison for sedition.
Poet Myo Tay Zar Maung, who had been sentenced to two years for sedition, was freed from Yamethin Prison north of Naypyidaw Wednesday.
Journalists Kyaw Zeya and Ah Hla Lay Thu Zar were also among those set to be freed as was Naing Ngan Lin, the social affairs minister for Yangon region under the NLD-led government.
In spite of the Independence Day amnesty, and one on National Day last November, the junta continues to target opposition politicians and real or alleged pro-democracy activists. More than 16,800 have arrested since the coup, according to Thailand-based monitoring group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma). Ahead of Wednesday’s amnesty, it said 13,375 political prisoners were still being held.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Written in English by Mike Firn.

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