Myanmar grants amnesty to 2,800 prisoners
Posted: 03 January 2007 1439 hrs

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YANGON : Myanmar's military government has granted amnesty to more than 2,800 prisoners to mark the nation's Independence Day, state media said Wednesday.

The official New Light of Myanmar did not say if any of the nation's 1,100 political prisoners were among those to be released for Thursday's holiday, but opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is not believed to be among them.

The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors conditions in Myanmar prisons, said it believed up to 20 other political prisoners could be freed.

Conditions in Myanmar's prisons are notoriously grim, and the junta has refused to allow the Red Cross to visit them for more than a year.

In October, Amnesty International reported that a detained pro-democracy activist had been tortured to death in a prison outside the central city of Mandalay.

The junta insisted he died of natural causes.

Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is the most famous of the nation's prisoners, having spent more than 10 of the last 17 years under house arrest in Yangon.

Her National League for Democracy party won 1990 elections in a landslide, but the military - which has ruled Myanmar since 1962 - has never recognised the result.

The junta has given no indication of when she might freed. - AFP/ch