Myanmar frees nearly 4,900 prisoners including some political detainees

BANGKOK (AP) — The head of Myanmar’s military government granted amnesty to nearly 4,900 prisoners to mark the country's traditional new year, state-run media reported Thursday, and an independent watchdog said they included at least 22 political detainees.

At least 19 buses with prisoners aboard left Yangon's Insein prison and were welcomed outside the gate by excited family members and friends who had been waiting since early morning.

Political Prisoners Network - Myanmar, an independent watchdog group that records violations of human rights in Myanmar’s prisons, said in a statement that by its initial count, 22 political prisoners had been freed.

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.

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.

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.

Among those imprisoned for incitement who were freed Thursday was the film director who works under the name of Steel and is also known as Dwe Myittar. He was arrested in March 2023 and had been held in Insein Prison.

Also released, according to the independent online news outlet Myanmar Now, was Hanthar Nyein, a news producer for Kamayut Media, who was arrested in March 2021 along with co-founder U.S. journalist Nathan Maung after the authorities raided their office in Yangon. Maung was released and deported to the U.S in June of that year.

Hanthar Nyein had been handed a total of seven years' imprisonment after being convicted of incitement in March 2022, and violating the Electronics Transactions Law, a charge that critics say criminalizes free speech, in December that same year.

Maung told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists that he and Hanthar Nyein were blindfolded, beaten, deprived of food and water and otherwise tortured during interrogations in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city.

More than 220 journalists have been detained since the army ousted the elected government in February 2021, according to the U.S.-based International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, with at least 51 still imprisoned by February this year.

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 March 28 earthquake that killed about 3,725 people and leveled structures from new condos to ancient pagodas.

In a new year’s speech, Min Aung Hlaing said his government will carry out reconstruction and rehabilitation measures in the quake-affected areas as quickly as possible. 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 with reports of clashes in the countryside but the number of casualties was unclear.