MYANMAR ANNOUNCES AMNESTY FOR 7,114 PRISONERS

YANGON, Myanmar – Myanmar's junta has granted amnesty to 7,114 convicts at prisons across the country, but it was not immediately known if they included political detainees.

• State television, which announced the amnesty Thursday evening, said the prisoners would be released for good behavior and on humanitarian grounds.
• Myanmar held more than 65,000 prisoners in mid-2007, according to the most recent figures available from the Asian and Pacific Conference of Correctional Administrators.
• Those to be released were not identified. Previous mass releases have usually included a handful of political detainees. They are usually identified when they report to opposition groups, which then announce their release.
• The country's best-known political prisoner is Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest.
• The United Nations and independent human rights groups estimate that the military regime holds more than 2,200 political prisoners, though the government insists that all detainees have been convicted of criminal offenses.
• The government generally grants amnesties to mark important national days, but most of the recipients are petty criminals. The last release was in February this year when 6,313 prisoners were freed, including less than two dozen political prisoners.
• It was not clear if the releases started Thursday. Friday is the 21st anniversary of the 1988 seizure of power by the current junta to quash vast pro-democracy demonstrations.
• An amnesty had been expected since July, when Myanmar's envoy to the United Nations told the Security Council that the government was preparing such a move to allow prisoners to participate in elections next year, the first in two decades.
• The amnesty comes just ahead of the opening of this year's U.N. General Assembly session, which will be attended by Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein, the highest-ranking government leader in recent years to participate.
• The junta's powerful deputy chairman, Senior Gen. Maung Aye, attended the 50th anniversary General Assembly session in 1995, but the occasion is usually left to the foreign minister.
• Human Rights Watch launched a campaign Wednesday for Myanmar's military government to release all political prisoners before the elections.
• Among those imprisoned in the past two years include people involved in peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in 2007 and in assisting the victims of a devastating cyclone in 2008. The group said some were handed decades-long sentences.
• It said the country has 43 known prisons holding political activists and more than 50 labor camps.

Source: AP