YANGON - Myanmar’s junta released 3,113 prisoners, including 98 foreigners, to mark the country’s traditional New Year on Monday, according to a statement from the military government published on pro-military Telegram channels.

The military-led government has jailed thousands of opponents and pro-democracy activists since it seized power in 2021 and brutally put down protests, drawing global condemnation.

Lieutenant-General Aung Lin Dwe, a state secretary of the junta, said in a statement that the amnesty is in “celebration of Myanmar’s New Year, to bring joy to the people and address humanitarian concerns”.

Those who reoffend would have to serve the remainder of their sentence with an additional penalty, the statement said. 

It did not say whether anti-junta protesters or journalists jailed covering the coup will be among those freed.   

A junta spokesman did not answer a phone call seeking comment.

Ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and figurehead of opposition to military rule, is serving 33 years in prison after a marathon of trials condemned internationally as a sham.

The junta has also detained other senior members of her civilian government that the military overthrew in the 2021 coup.

At least 17,460 people remain in detention and 3,240 have been killed by the junta, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an activist group.

Around 100 people gathered outside Insein prison in commercial hub Yangon after the announcement, hoping their friends and loved ones would be included in the amnesty.

Ms Win Win Htay said her younger brother was jailed for four months after police stopped him at a checkpoint and found a small knife on his keychain.

“I hope he will be released today,” she told Agence France-Presse as she waited outside the prison on Monday.

Two yellow buses later pulled out of the prison compound, with some in the waiting crowd waving and calling to those inside.

The junta periodically grants an amnesty to prisoners, but the numbers in 2023 and the previous year are a fraction of the 23,000 released during the same Buddhist holiday in 2021.

In previous years, the traditional Buddhist New Year holiday were joyous affairs, with city-wide water fights. 

But this year, streets in many major cities were silent in boycott after a military airstrike on a village in a resistance hot spot that media and locals said killed more than 170 people. 

Human rights organisations and many world leaders have repeatedly called on the junta to release all political prisoners. REUTERS, AFP