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Junta may release 3,000 prisoners before election
Irrawaddy - October 11, 2010
Sai Zom Hseng – The Burmese junta is likely to release about 3,000 prisoners before the upcoming election on Nov. 7, but human rights advocates are skeptical whether political prisoners will be included in the amnesty.
According to Reuters news agency, an official in the correction department said that the military government has plans for an amnesty ahead of the election.
It reported on Monday that the prisoners to be released had sentences that would end in November or December. It was not clear, however, whether political prisoners would be included in the amnesty. There are about 2,200 political prisoners in Burma.
The news agency quoted Nyan Win, a spokesman for the National League for Democracy (NLD), as saying that he did not believe political prisoners or NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest, would be released.
A retired judge in Rangoon said it was possible that some less prominate political prisoners could be among those released.
"I don't think the regime has enough confidence to run the risk of releasing prominent political prisoners before the election," Reuters quoted him as saying. "Their release may come in a general amnesty, most probably after the election, to improve the country's image."
Tate Naing, the secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma, a Burmese human rights group, told The Irrawaddy on Monday, "The information about releasing prisoners hasn't been announce yet. It was only a comment by one anonymous official in the correction department."
"It is possible that the authorities will release prisoners ahead of the election, but only a small number of political prisoners would be included, according to our experiences," Tate Naing said.
The Myanmar Times weekly newspaper in Rangoon reported that there are usually more than 50,000 convicted criminals in Burma's 43 prisons and 100 labor camps at any one time, as well as about 6,000 persons awaiting trial.
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