Military-ruled Burma is to free 7,114 prisoners from its notorious jails in an amnesty, state television said Thursday, but it was not clear if any political detainees would be released.
Relatives of Burma prisoners wait outside Insein prison, north of Rangoon, in 2007. Military-ruled Burma is to free 7,114 prisoners from its notorious jails in an amnesty, state television said Thursday, but it was not clear if any political detainees would be released.
Government mouthpiece television said that the prisoners were being set free on "humanitarian grounds" starting from Thursday but did not give details of their identities.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had her house arrest extended by 18 months in August, was not immediately available to say whether any of its members had been freed.
The amnesty was announced to mark the anniversary on Friday of a military coup that followed the crushing of a 1988 student pro-democracy uprising.
The junta has released a handful of dissidents during previous amnesties but, usually, most of those freed are common criminals.
The announcement comes a day after Human Rights Watch said the number of political prisoners in Burma had doubled to more than 2,200 in the two years since a crackdown on protests led by Buddhist monks.
The New York-based group issued a report urging the junta to free all prisoners of conscience, saying the "brutality" of the military government had been highlighted by the latest detention term ordered against Suu Kyi.
"Burma's generals are planning elections next year that will be a sham if their opponents are in prison," said Tom Malinowski, an HRW official, at the launch of the report in New York.
Burma's government has said it will hold multi-party elections in 2010, but critics say the polls are just a way for the generals to solidify and legitimise their nearly five-decade grip on power.
The regime released 6,300 prisoners in February, saying it would allow more people to take part in the polls, but only 17 political detainees were among them.
n September 2008 the junta freed more than 9,000 prisoners, among them 78-year-old journalist Win Tin, who was the country's longest-serving political prisoner.
Meanwhile, Burma's junta-controlled newspapers defended a decision to bar Suu Kyi from court on Friday during final arguments in her appeal against her detention.
The Nobel laureate was convicted on August 11 of breaching security laws after an American swam to her house. She was sentenced to three years' hard labour but junta chief Than Shwe cut the term to 18 months' house arrest.
"According to the practices of the courts, any defendants are not sent to the tribunal," a commentary in the English-language New Light of Burma daily said.
"If the defendant is a prisoner, there is no need to summon him to the court for his statements," said the editorial, which also appeared in state-run Burmese language newspapers.
Eccentric US national John Yettaw was sentenced to seven years' hard labour at the same trial for swimming uninvited to her lakeside house in May, but the regime freed him last month after a visit by US Senator Jim Webb.
The guilty verdict against Suu Kyi sparked international outrage and the imposition of further sanctions against Burma's powerful generals, who have already kept the frail Suu Kyi locked up for 14 of the past 20 years.
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