Myanmar began releasing more than 9,000 prisoners on Wednesday, with many drug o...
YANGON - Myanmar began releasing more than 9,000 prisoners on Wednesday, with many drug offenders among the first to walk free, but just two political detainees, after the president declared an amnesty on the first day of the traditional New Year.
Authorities were scrutinizing who should be pardoned among the rest, he said in a statement on his Facebook page, without elaborating.Dozens of people waited in sweltering heat for hours at the gates of Insein prison, the colonial-era jail on the outskirts of the commercial capital of Yangon, hoping their relatives would be among those pardoned.
“There are too many people who should be released inside the prison,” said 33-year-old Paik Paik, who said she served four years of a seven-year sentence, some of them spent breaking rocks at a labor camp separated from her children, after she was arrested with two methamphetamine pills.Two Reuters reporters jailed for breaking the Official Secrets Act were not among those being pardoned, a senior official at Insein, where they are being held, told Reuters.
Two political prisoners, of a total of 364, were released on Wednesday, said Aung Myo Kyaw of a human rights group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
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