Myanmar’s military rulers have ordered the release of more than 6,000 prisoners to mark the country’s Independence Day.
While families rushed to wait outside prisons on Sunday to see if their loved ones were included in the amnesty, there was no indication that the 6,000 would include former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, despite mounting international pressure calling for her release.
The junta said 6,134 men and women would be freed from prisons, detention centres and labour camps across the country as part of the annual amnesty marking 78 years since independence from British rule on 4 January 1948.
“The acting president of the Union of the Republic of Myanmar has pardoned 6,134 male and female prisoners who are serving their terms at respective prisons, detention centres and camps,” the junta’s National Defence and Security Council (NDSC) said in a statement.
In a separate announcement, the authorities said 52 foreign nationals would also be released and deported.
The NDSC described the move as a gesture made “on humanitarian and compassionate grounds”.
Sentences for other inmates were reduced by one-sixth nationwide, excluding those convicted of serious offences such as murder and rape, or jailed under security, terrorism, corruption, arms or drug laws.
Those freed were warned they would have to serve the remainder of their original terms if they reoffended.
Crowds gathered early outside Yangon’s Insein prison, the country’s most notorious, clutching lists of names and waiting for relatives to emerge as buses ferried prisoners away.
Among those released, according to the pro-military Popular News Journal, was Ye Htut, a former information minister and presidential spokesperson in an earlier military-backed administration.
Arrested in October 2023, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison last year over Facebook posts deemed seditious.
It remains unclear how many of those being freed were political detainees.
Independent monitors estimate that tens of thousands of people have been arrested since the army seized power in February 2021, crushing a brief period of civilian rule and triggering a nationwide armed uprising involving new resistance groups and long-established ethnic forces.
More than 3.6 million people have been displaced by the fighting.
High-profile political prisoners appear unaffected by the amnesty, and there was no sign that Ms Suu Kyi, 80, would be freed.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who led the elected government overthrown by the coup, is serving a combined 27-year sentence after convictions which supporters say were politically motivated. She has been held largely incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw.
State media moved last month to address concerns raised by her family, saying: “Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is in good health,” without offering evidence or allowing independent verification.
Her son, Kim Aris, who has not seen or heard from her for years, responded: “The military claims she is in good health, yet they refuse to provide any independent proof, no recent photograph, no medical verification and no access by family, doctors or international observers. If she is truly well, they can prove it.”
Mr Aris had earlier said he hoped the junta’s staged election might open a path to her release or transfer to house arrest, noting that she was freed after a previous period of detention in 2010 following a vote.
The military rejected his comments, accusing him of interference. “This is merely a fabrication, timed and distributed to disrupt the free and fair multi-party democratic general election that will be held in Myanmar in the near future,” a junta statement said.
Mr Aris replied: “I have no intention of interfering in Burma’s politics. But after years of total isolation, secrecy and silence, any son would begin to fear the worst.”
The amnesty comes as the military presses ahead with a month-long, three-phase election that began late last month and has been widely condemned by opposition groups, the United Nations and Western governments as a sham designed to entrench military rule.
Many anti-junta parties are barred from or boycotting the process, and it is illegal to criticise the polls.
Early official results from the first phase show the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, led by retired generals, dominating the limited seats declared so far, including the vast majority in the lower house.
Turnout figures released by the junta are significantly lower than in the last free elections held in 2015 and 2020, which Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won by landslides before it was dissolved.
