Myanmar's ruling military junta has freed one of the country's best known, longest-imprisoned dissidents as part of a general release of almost 4,000 prisoners, a member of the dissident's family said yesterday.
Student activist Paw U Tun, who goes by the name Min Ko Naing, is one of several dozen political prisoners who believed to have been released since Thursday, when the junta said it was suspending the terms of 3,937 prisoners.
It said they had been wrongly charged by a state intelligence agency.
There was no indication, however, that Myanmar's most famous political prisoner -- Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi -- would be freed from house arrest. She has been held since May last year.
However, unconfirmed reports said at least two dozen members of Suu Kyi's opposition National League for Democracy party have also been freed.
Min Ko Naing's family members said on condition of anonymity that he was with them in the capital, Yangon, after being released from a prison in the northwest. They gave no further details.
Min Ko Naing, 42, was a zoology student at a university in the capital when he became a charismatic leader of a 1988 popular uprising against military rule, in place since a 1962 coup.
After the military violently suppressed the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations, he was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in jail for his political activities in Myanmar, also called Burma.
The sentence was later commuted to 10 years, but he was kept in detention under a law that allows imprisonment without charges or trial.
The US Campaign for Burma, a Washington-based group that lobbies for regime change in Myanmar, said Min Ko Naing's eyesight had deteriorated badly in prison and he had a slight fever, but was otherwise well when he returned to his family.
"Needless to say, it was a happy and tearful family reunion," said a statement from the group.
The release of another prominent prisoner, journalist Win Tin, was expected yesterday. The 74-year-old has been serving a 20-year sentence in Yangon after being jailed in July 1989.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the announcement of the releases "and is encouraged by reports that a number of people detained for political activities are included among them," UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.
Freeing Myanmar's political prisoners is a major demand of the UN and Western countries critical of the junta's poor human rights record and its failure to hand power to Suu Kyi's party, which won a 1990 general election.
US State Department Deputy Spokesman Adam Ereli said Washington noted the failure to include some top dissidents, such as Suu Kyi, among those freed.
"We call upon the Burmese authorities to release these individuals and all political prisoners immediately and unconditionally," Ereli said.
British Foreign Office Minister Douglas Alexander also called for "freeing all the other political prisoners who languish in Burma's prisons."
State-run radio and television had announced on Thursday night that the prisoners had been wrongly charged by the former National Intelligence Bureau, dissolved by the junta last month.
The bureau had been headed by former Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt, who was ousted on Oct. 19 and has been accused of corruption and insubordination.
Khin Nyunt's removal was believed to have been orchestrated by hardline junta members.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS