Prisoner Release Resumes

About a dozen trucks packed with several hundred prisoners drove out of Burma’s Insein prison on Friday, according to eyewitness reports.

“The release is still going on,” said one eye-witness, Maung Maung Khin, a close friend of the prominent journalist Win Tin, one of around 1,400 political prisoners held in Burmese jails.

Maung Maung Khin was speaking in a telephone interview before returning to the Insein prison in the hopes of seeing Win Tin freed. The 74-year-old journalist was jailed 15 years ago.

Deputy foreign minister Kyaw Thu said Thursday Win Tin was on the list of prisoners to be released.

Very few political prisoners were among the released on Friday. Sein Ohn and Naing Myint were freed from Mandalay prison, sources close to Sein Ohn’s family said. Cameraman Sein Ohn was arrested in 1996 and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

Friday's prisoner release came less than a day after the military government announced that 5,311 prisoners were to be freed. These are in addition to the nearly 4,000 prisoners that Rangoon said on November 18 were to be released.

Following that announcement, some 600 prisoners were freed, but then the release was suspended. Fewer than 30 political prisoners were released, including prominent student leader Min Ko Naing and three elected members of the opposition National League for Democracy, or NLD. Min Ko Naing was arrested in the 1988 student uprising and served the subsequent 16 years in solitary confinement, for much of the time without access to reading matter.

The government announced the limited amnesty weeks after the National Intelligence Bureau, or NIB, was dissolved on Oct 22. The NIB was dissolved following the dismissal and arrest of its chief, prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt ,on charges of corruption.

“It was observed that the NIB might have committed irregularities,” the junta’s New Light of Myanmar newspaper said Friday. “After due review of the cases, prison terms of 5,311 convicts have been suspended …and they will be released from the respective prisons.”

Deputy foreign minister Kyaw Thu insisted the government would stick to its pledge to free all prisoners on the list, despite the suspension of the release. “If we fail to keep our word, then we will face more pressure, not only from our side, but from the West,” he told Reuters news agency.

Nevertheless, some exile groups remain cautious in their reaction to news of the prisoner release, saying their judgment will depend on how many are actually freed.

“We can be optimistic only after seeing what they do” said Bo Kyi, joint secretary of the Thai-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma. “We have experience of promises that weren't kept.”