Myanmar junta, ethnic rebels discuss election
Yangon:myanmar’s junta is holding talks with three ethnic rebel groups on staging elections in areas they control, a rebel spokesman said on Friday, as the military prepares for polls the US has said will be a “sham.”
The Southeast Asian country has about 20 ethnic rebel armies that have fought each other and the military for decades over autonomy and control of the drugs trade and natural resources in its borderlands.
Some have condemned the ouster of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government when the military staged a February 2021 coup, and offered shelter and weapons training to the “People’s Defence Forces” (PDF) that sprung up as resistance against the junta.
Leaders from the Shan State Progress Party, United Wa State Party and National Democratic Alliance Army -- which have largely stayed out of the post-coup conflict -- are holding three days of talks in capital Naypyidaw, state media said on Friday.
The three groups control swathes of territory that have been relatively calm since the coup, which has plunged much of the country into turmoil.
They and the junta discussed on Thursday the “political needs of the groups and building a Union based on democracy and the federal system,” according to the Global New Light of Myanmar.
The military “asked us to let them hold free and fair elections in our area,” a spokesman for SSPP, which controls territory in northern Shan state, said. “For us, we will not oppose their election.” A spokesman for the UWSP did not respond to AFP’S request for comment.
Meanwhile, among more than 7,000 prisoners granted amnesty by Myanmar’s junta this week were about 300 political prisoners, the United Nations (UN) said on Friday.
“It’s about 300 who were political prisoners,” spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters, citing “credible sources.”
He said that so far, 195 of those cases had been verified.
Local monitoring group AAPP also said it understood 300 political prisoners had been released.
It had identified 223 of them and was working to verify other cases. “The release of political prisoners in Myanmar is not only a relief to those unfairly detained, but also their families,” Laurence said.
Whilewelcomingtheamnesty,laurencepointed out that “on the very day that these political prisoners were released, another 22 were detained. “So the situation continues.”
And many of the people being detained for opposing military rule, he said, “have been subjected to torture and ill-treatment”.
“Such detentions are not only intended to silence the junta’s critics, but are also designed to instil fear.”