Myanmar junta to release former UK ambassador, Australian, Japanese prisoners
YANGON: Myanmar’s military said yesterday it would release almost 6,000 prisoners, including a former British ambassador, a Japanese journalist and an Australian economics adviser, in a rare olive branch from the isolated junta.
The Southeast Asian country has been in turmoil since the military’s coup last year and a bloody crackdown on dissent during which thousands have been jailed.
Former British envoy Vicky Bowman, Australian economics adviser Sean Turnell and Japanese journalist Toru Kubota ‘will be released to mark National Day’, a senior officer told AFP.
All three would be deported, the junta said without specifying a date.
Three buses left the main gate of the sprawling, colonial-era prison shortly after 3pm local time (0830 GMT) and passed by a crowd of around 200 people waiting outside, an AFP reporter said.
Altogether, 5,774 prisoners will be released, ‘including some 600 women’, the junta official said, revising an earlier figure of about 700 women.
Three former ministers from Aung San Suu Kyi’s ousted government and detained USMyanmar citizen Kyaw Htay Oo would also be released, a junta official said.
The junta did not say in its statement announcing the amnesty how many of those pardoned had been arrested during the military’s crackdown on dissent.
Bowman, who served as ambassador from 2002 to 2006, was detained with her husband in August for failing to declare she was living at an address different from the one listed on her foreigner’s registration certificate.
They were later jailed for a year. Her husband, prominent Myanmar artist Htein Lin, will also be released, the military official said.
A British diplomatic source said Bowman had not yet been released but they expected her to be freed.
The junta statement did not list her husband among those due to be deported.
Ties between Myanmar and its former colonial ruler Britain have soured since the military’s takeover, with the junta this year criticising the UK’s recent downgrading of its mission there as ‘unacceptable’.
Turnell was working as an adviser to Myanmar’s civilian leader Suu Kyi when he was detained shortly after the coup in February 2021.
He and Suu Kyi were convicted in September by a closed junta court of breaching the official secrets act and jailed for three years each.
“We welcome reports in relation to Professor Sean Turnell,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Twitter.
“Professor Turnell continues to be our first priority. As such, we will not be commenting further at this stage.”
Kubota, 26, was detained in July near an anti-government rally in Yangon along with two Myanmar citizens and jailed for 10 years.
A source at Japan’s embassy in Myanmar told AFP they had ‘been informed that Mr Kubota will be released today’ by junta authorities.