Myanmar Releases 113 Prisoners, But Jails Two Others
KABUL: (MEP) Myanmar on Saturday has freed 113 political prisoners under an amnesty ordered by the country’s new government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, as her first official act.
The move was praised by human rights advocates, but a jarring note was struck when two peace activists the same day Friday were each sentenced to two years with hard labor for activities bringing them into contact with an armed ethnic rebel group that has been battling the central government, state-run newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar reported, citing police authorities.
A court in the central city of Mandalay sentenced Zaw Zaw Latt and Pwint Phyu Latt under a law barring associating with an unlawful organization for their contacts with the Kachin Independence Army, a militant group in Myanmar’s far north.
The two are members of an interfaith religious organization and said that they had been seeking to help refugees from fighting. Both are also Muslims, a minority that has faced increasing pressure and violence in recent years in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar.
The releases included 69 student protestors arrested over an education protest that was crushed in a violent police crackdown in March 2015.
The releases came along with a general amnesty of about 4,000 ordinary prisoners ahead of the Southeast Asian nation’s traditional New Year festival, often the occasion for prisoner releases.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party (NLD) had pledged that the release of activists and political prisoners would be the first priority of her new government, as the routine police persecution and jailing of pro-democracy protestors by the former Junta stirred an international outcry.
Muslims are a religious minority in Myanmar; Rohingya Muslims have faced pressure and harsh violence in recent years in the overwhelmingly Buddhist country. Myanmar’s government refuses to recognize Rohingya Muslims as citizens and labels them as “illegal” immigrants.
