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Read, Debate: Engage.
| topic: | Political violence |
|---|---|
| located: | Myanmar |
| editor: | Sasha Kong |
In mid-April, Myanmar released over 1,600 prisoners in an amnesty to celebrate its new year. While it sounds ostensibly like an act of mercy, a closer look into the detail suggests otherwise.
The number is less than one-tenth of last year’s 23,000, and none of those released were political prisoners. This comes after the military has reportedly arrested over 13,000 people and killed more than 1,700 pro-democracy protesters since the military junta coup in February 2021, according to a local rights group cited by various news agencies.
In October 2021, the junta released over 5,600 people arrested over anti-coup protests out of “mercy,” but ironically, many were arrested again right after their release, sparking international outcry.
If the merciful release in October was more of a publicity stunt from the regime, now it has given up on even staging one, especially when the world’s attention is largely captured by Russia’s human rights abuses in Ukraine.
Faced with potential jail terms, many protesters started staging smaller protests to keep everyone away from arrests. And when they are not out in the streets rallying, they told Amnesty International that they have been followed by plainclothes police officers, been forced into hiding, and had their family members threatened or arrested.
For the dissidents outside of the country, the military junta made sure to bar them from ever returning to their homeland. In March, it terminated the citizenship of 33 high-profile dissidents, including Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations who voiced his support of the ousted leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi.
Stripping of citizenship is panned by rights activists as an “abuse of human rights and a breach of international law,” and leaves the dissident stateless. Pro-democracy protesters from as early as the 1990s and early 2000s still haven’t had their Burmese citizenship restored.
If murderers can still be extradited back to their home countries for trial and imprisonment, supporting democracy in Myanmar comes at a much higher and crueler price.
Image by Gayatri Malhotra
