Myanmar’s president grants amnesty to 8,500 prisoners
yangon — Myanmar’s president on Tuesday announced pardons for more than 8,500 prisoners, including three dozen jailed in political cases, as part of an annual amnesty marking the country’s traditional new year.
President Win Myint, who took office last month after his predecessor suddenly resigned, said the pardons were granted on humanitarian grounds during the Buddhist new year festival known as Thingyan.
The amnesty was extended mostly to drug offenders, as well as more than 50 foreigners and 36 political prisoners, according to a breakdown posted on Facebook by government spokesman Zaw Htay.
Among those released were two Baptist church leaders jailed last year on charges of supporting ethnic minority rebels in the war-torn northeast in a case criticised by rights groups.
The ethnic Kachin men were detained by soldiers in December 2016 after giving journalists information about a church allegedly hit by military airstrikes in Shan state.
“Now we are free and we feel happy... I hope our land will be peaceful in the future so this kind of thing would not happen again,” Langjaw Gam Seng, the church youth leader who was sentenced to two years and three months, said after his release from prison in the town of Lashio in the state.
An NGO that helps political prisoners welcomed the overall amnesty but called for the release of at least eight more prisoners of conscience who remain in jail. —