Death sentences commuted

YANGON (AFP) — Myanmar’s leader commuted all death sentences in a blanket order on Friday, one of his first official acts since the 2021 coup leader was installed as the country’s civilian president.

The military junta led by Min Aung Hlaing snatched power in Myanmar in a February 2021 putsch and resumed executions after decades of not carrying them out, targeting dissidents opposed to his coup, rights group said.

By the following year, more than 130 people had been sentenced to death, according to the United Nations, however, definitive figures are hard to track in the country’s opaque, closed-door court system.

After five years ruling as armed forces chief, Min Aung Hlaing was installed last Friday as president in a transition democracy watchdogs have described as a civilian rebranding of military rule.

The shift has been accompanied by rollbacks of some of the junta’s post-coup crackdown measures — steps the leadership tout as reconciliation, but which critics describe as cosmetic measures to aid the rebranding effort.

A communique on behalf of Min Aung Hlaing said “those serving death sentences shall have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment,” without naming specific prisoners.

An amnesty in May 2023 lifted the death sentences of 38 individual prisoners, but was not a blanket measure. Friday’s act was announced as part of a broader amnesty to mark Myanmar’s Thingyan new year.