The UN warns of an “astonishing increase” in internally displaced people due to the Burmese conflict in 2024, up to 3.5 million people MADRID Jan. 4 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The military junta of Burma has announced the granting of an amnesty to 5,800 prisoners effective this Saturday, commemoration of Independence Day of a country that is currently in the midst of an armed conflict between the Army and rebel and resistance groups against the coup. Military status of February 1, 2021.
The pardon is aimed at exactly 5,864 prisoners, including 180 foreign prisoners who will be deported, according to a statement from the military council, collected by the Mizzima news portal, which does not specify the identity of those released.
The junta has also announced that 144 people who had been sentenced to life in prison will have their sentences commuted to 15 years in prison.
As usual, the announcement was accompanied by a speech by the Burmese military leader, Min Aung Hlaing, who once again held the rebel groups exclusively responsible for the constant failure of attempts at peace talks encouraged by the international community.
“The groups that fight against the State offer to abandon the path of armed violence and solve the political problem through political means. We also want to make it clear that we are not going to compromise with the demands of the armed terrorist groups,” he assured.
The NGO Association for the Assistance of Political Prisoners of Burma (AAPP) denounces that more than 6,100 political prisoners have been murdered by the military junta since it came to power and that 21,499 people are still detained in the country for purely ideological reasons.
This past Friday, the deputy spokesman for the Secretary General of the United Nations, Farhan Haq, warned that the armed conflict still persists in many parts of Burma, especially in the state of Rakhine — home to armed separatist groups such as the Arakan Army, that in recent months they have inflicted heavy defeats on the military — and that “civilians continue to face extreme risks, acute food insecurity, and a near-total collapse of critical public services.”
The conflict, Haq added, has forced more than 3.5 million people to leave their homes in 2024, representing a “staggering increase” of almost 1.5 million internally displaced people compared to last year.