Myanmar’s junta claimed on Monday that it will release more than 3,000 detainees to honor the Buddhist New Year, but did not say whether those imprisoned in the country’s violent crackdown on dissent would be released.
Since its coup more than two years ago, which threw the country into chaos and caused extensive confrontations with anti-coup rebels, the military has detained thousands.
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing “pardoned 3,015 prisoners… to mark Myanmar New Year, for the peaceful mind of the people, and on humanitarian grounds,” according to a statement from the junta’s information staff.
Those who reoffend would be required to serve the balance of their sentence with an added punishment, according to the statement.
It was not stated whether anti-junta protestors or journalists imprisoned for covering the coup will be among those released.
Shortly after the coup, the junta released some 23,000 detainees, with human rights groups worried that the move would free up room for military opponents as well as generate turmoil in communities.
Thousands of prisoners are regularly granted amnesty to commemorate the country’s traditional Buddhist New Year festival, which has previously been celebrated with city-wide water fights.
However, after a military airstrike on a town in a resistance hotbed that killed more than 170 people, streets in many large cities were silent in protest this year.
According to a local monitoring group, nearly 21,000 people have been jailed since the military deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in February 2021.
Suu Kyi has been incarcerated since the coup’s inception.
The junta completed a series of closed-court hearings against the 77-year-old Nobel laureate in December, imprisoning her for a total of 33 years in a procedure that rights groups have criticized as a fraud.
According to the United Nations, at least 170 journalists have been arrested since the putsch.
