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Myanmar’s government released one of its most famous dissidents along with at least 80 other political prisoners Wednesday, but activists said authorities would need to release significantly more dissidents before they will be satisfied the country is embarking on a true path of reform.
Authorities released Zarganar, a prominent comedian who goes by one name and who was the subject of a front-page Wall Street Journal article in 2007. He was detained in 2008 for criticizing Myanmar’s slow response to Cyclone Nargis, a storm that left more than 135,000 people missing or dead. Authorities also released several members of Myanmar’s main opposition National League for Democracy political party as part of the mass amnesty announced a day earlier, which government officials said will include more than 6,000 inmates, including some common criminals.
The precise number of dissidents set free as of Wednesday night remained unclear, with no official word from the government about who was included. Efforts to reach the government to comment were unsuccessful.
Human-rights groups said conversations with relatives and other people indicated between 80 and as many as 206 political prisoners were included. Activists had previously said Myanmar authorities were holding between 600 and 2,100 political prisoners.
The prisoner amnesty has emerged as one of the most closely watched events in recent Myanmar history, as diplomats and activists struggle to assess recent signs that the secretive Southeast Asian nation is trying to turn the page on decades of military rule.
The harsh military junta that controlled Myanmar since 1962 recently relinquished power after army loyalists swept national elections late last year in a vote Western leaders decried as a fraud. Since then, leaders have said they are enacting changes that have drawn guarded praise from Western leaders, including recent steps to ease curbs on the Internet and boost rural development.
But Western diplomats have said they want to see more evidence Myanmar is changing before they respond with steps such as an easing of economic sanctions put in place since the late 1990s. Western leaders would likely be looking for “hundreds” of political dissidents to be set free at a minimum, a European diplomat said Wednesday.
Other Western leaders have said Myanmar would need to take other steps—including ending human-rights abuses in areas controlled by ethnic minorities—before opening discussions on lifting any sanctions.
The response from human-rights activists to Wednesday’s release, meanwhile, was lukewarm, with the numbers released falling well short of hopes, though it is possible moreprisoners will be freed in coming days.
Wednesday’s release represented “a minimum first step,” Amnesty International said in a statement. “Unless the figure rises substantially, it will constitute a relaxation of reform efforts rather than a bold step forward,” said Amnesty Myanmar researcher Benjamin Zawacki.
Human Rights Watch and others called on Myanmar authorities to release all of its remaining political prisoners.
“The freedom of each individual is invaluable, but I wish that all political prisoners would be released,” said Myanmar’s best-known democracy activist, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, according to the Associated Press. A spokesman for Ms. Suu Kyi’s NLD political party said 155 political prisoners were freed.
The U.S. Campaign for Burma, a Washington-based advocacy group, said it had confirmed the release of 206 political prisoners, AP reported.
A number of key detainees remained behind bars, relatives said, including former student leadersMin Ko Naing and Ko Htay Kywe, who were part of a failed pro-democracy uprising in 1988. Other activists have said they remain skeptical of the government’s motives, noting that authorities have previously released prisoners only to re-arrest them later.
“I am not happy at all, as none of my 14 so-called political prisoner friends from Myitkyina prison are among those freed today,” Zarganar told the AP in a phone interview, referring to the prison where he was detained. “I will be happy and I will thank the government o—nly when all of my friends are freed,” he said.
Myo Thein Htun, who remains a friend of Zarganar from their college days in Myanmar and now works for a clothing design company in New York, said the comedian is doing well. “He just came out of prison and began making jokes right away.”
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Source: The Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2011
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