Myanmar junta to release over 6,000 prisoners in annual amnesty

YANGON: Myanmar’s junta said on Sunday it would release more than 6,000 prisoners as part of an annual amnesty to mark the country’s independence day.

“The Acting President of the Union of the Republic of Myanmar has pardoned 6,134 male and female prisoners who are serving their terms at respective prisons, detention centres and camps,” the junta’s National Defence and Security Council said in a statement.

Fifty-two foreign prisoners were also to be released and deported, it said in a separate statement.

The military has arrested thousands of protesters and activists since its February 2021 coup that ended Myanmar’s brief democratic experiment and plunged the nation into civil war.

The yearly prisoner amnesty “on humanitarian and compassionate grounds”, according to the national security council, comes as the country marks 78 years of independence from British colonial rule.

Hundreds of people were waiting for the release of their family members outside Yangon’s Insein prison on Sunday morning, holding papers with names of prisoners on them, an AFP journalist said.

Myanmar’s junta opened voting in a phased month-long election one week ago, with its leaders pledging the poll would bring on democracy, while rights advocates and Western diplomats have condemned it as a sham and rebranding of martial rule.

The pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has a decisive lead in the first phase, with the USDP winning 90 percent of the lower house seats announced so far, official results published in state media showed.