23 September 2008
Release of Burmese Political Prisoners Positive but Overdue
United States continues pushing for release of Aung San Suu Kyi and others
Washington — The State Department welcomes the release of 9,000 Burmese prisoners, including the journalist Win Tin, but urges the country’s military rulers to release all political prisoners, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi who has been under house arrest for much of the past 19 years.
Deputy spokesman Robert Wood told reporters September 23 that the release of 76-year-old Win Tin, a prominent dissident who was Burma’s longest-held political prisoner, is “long overdue, but a very positive development.” Win Tin had been held in Rangoon’s Insein prison since 1989.
The prisoner release comes nearly one year after the military junta crushed a peaceful pro-democracy uprising led by the country’s Buddhist monks. (See “Bush Announces Additional Sanctions Against Burmese Junta.”)
“We continue to call on the Burmese regime to release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and to move the country down the path toward democracy. It's something we've been calling on for quite some time,” Wood said.
The spokesman said he did not know how many other political prisoners were among the estimated 9,000 released earlier in the day on September 23. Human rights groups have estimated that approximately 2,000 people have been imprisoned in Burma for their political views and activities.
Burmese state news media said amnesty was granted to allow those released to participate in elections scheduled for 2010. The elections would be the country’s first since Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won the vote in 1990, but her detention by the military junta prevented her from becoming prime minister.
A senior State Department official said there is little that the United States can do to help secure the release of political prisoners in Burma.
“The government is very secretive. It’s opaque at best. We haven’t been very successful. Nobody has in the international community. And we’re going to continue to push. That’s really all we can do at this point,” said the official, who spoke on background to America.gov.
The official said the Bush administration hopes “this is going to be a first step in a process of … more releases, especially of political prisoners,” but added that it is “really hard to tell.”
The U.S. hope is that more international pressure on Burma’s military rulers would lead to changes in the junta’s attitude toward the country’s pro-democracy opposition, but so far “we haven’t seen enough,” the official said.
The official praised Win Tin’s release as a “positive step,” but said there is “so much more that the Burmese need to do and we’re going to continue to push” on the issue.
