Myanmar Frees Group of Dissenters

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/world/asia/myanmar-frees-group-of-dissenters.html

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YANGON, Myanmar (Reuters) — Myanmar’s president announced an amnesty on Tuesday for about 100 prisoners, a senior official said, 56 of whom were confirmed as political detainees by a group monitoring activists held in the country’s jails.

The release is the latest in a series of amnesties declared by President Thein Sein and came a day after the European Union lifted all sanctions on Myanmar, also known as Burma, excluding an arms embargo.

Bo Kyi, of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, said the group had confirmed the release of 56 political prisoners from five jails. According to the group, 176 remain in detention.

More than 800 political prisoners were freed in amnesties between May 2011 and last November.

In Washington, a State Department deputy spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, urged the government to release all political prisoners. “We welcome and encourage the unconditional release of all prisoners, but we do note that they’ve released about 50 today,” he told reporters.

Previous releases of political prisoners coincided with reviews of Western sanctions or high-level visits, such as that by Mr. Thein Sein to Washington last September and President Obama’s trip to Myanmar two months later.

“At key international moments the government releases a few political prisoners instead of releasing them all immediately,” said Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK. “Almost all the laws used to put the political prisoners in jail are still in place.”

The European Union’s decision to lift sanctions was criticized by rights groups as ignoring Myanmar’s human rights abuses, including the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.

Mr. Ventrell of the State Department declined to comment on the European Union move, and repeated statements of concern about the treatment of Myanmar’s ethnic minorities.

“We have taken some measures to authorize the export of U.S. financial services to offer new U.S. investment, but we have a calibrated policy that includes sanctions authority and leaves them in place as a means to encourage continued progress on reforms,” he said.

Human Rights Watch released a report the same day sanctions were lifted, accusing the state authorities of the ethnic killings of Rohingya Muslims after violence broke out last year, leaving at least 125,000 people displaced and 211 people dead.