Myanmar opposition provides list of 591 "prisoners of conscience"

Nov 14, 2011, 10:30 GMT

Yangon - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday announced a list of 591 'prisoners of conscience' who remain in jail.

The government on October 12 released 7,500 prison inmates, including at least 240 known political prisoners. The regime is expected to announce another amnesty soon.

The exact number of political prisoners is a subject for debate.

The popular estimate of 2,100 was compiled by the Association for Political Prisoners Burma, a group of Myanmar exiles, and has become widely accepted.

Suu Kyi revealed a lower figure in the list of 'prisoners of conscience' copmpiles by her National League for Democracy (NLD).

'We have our own list of 591. The government may have its own list and other organizations have their lists,' Suu Kyi said.

The release of political prisoners is one of the conditions of Western democracies for normalizing relations with Myanmar.

President Thein Sein, who came to power after the November 7 general election, has made several gestures of reconciliation in recent months.

In August, he held private talks with Suu Kyi, who was released from seven years of house arrest term on November 13.

The government has also approved a liberal labour law allowing workers the right to unionize and strike, and shelved a hydroelectric dam project opposed by different sectors of society.

It also amended a law to pave the way for the NLD to re-register as a legal political party.

The organization will meet on November 18 to decide to re-register and contest an upcoming by-election.

The NLD boycotted the November 7 polls because the law at the time barred people serving sentences from belonging to political parties. That would have forced the NLD to drop Suu Kyi from its ranks in order to stand in the elections.

Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, has headed the NLD since it was founded in 1989. She spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest.

NLD sources said she is seriously considering contesting the by-election herself. Myanmar was ruled by military dictatorships since 1962.