Myanmar Junta Releases High-Profile Foreign Prisoners in Mass Amnesty

[Borg Refinery]

Myanmar’s military leaders have finally released the Australian economist Sean Turnell, a former adviser to ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as part of a mass prisoner amnesty that saw nearly 6,000 others released from custody, Myanmar media reported today. According to The Associated Press, the military junta’s spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun confirmed Turnell’s release to local media outlets. He said that Japanese filmmaker Kubota Toru and former U.K. ambassador Vicky Bowman, as well as the American botanist Kyaw Htay Oo, were also among those released. All four foreigners were reportedly scheduled to be deported this evening to Bangkok. The four foreign prisoners were released alongside 5,774 other prisoners as part of an amnesty for National Victory Day, the military said in a separate statement. The Associated Press cited state media reports saying that those released also included Kyaw Tint Swe, a former union minister for the office of the State Counselor; Than Htay, a former member of the Union Election Commission; and Lae Lae Maw, a former Chief Minister of Tanintharyi Region who had been jailed for corruption under Aung San Suu Kyi’s government. [..]

The truth is that Aung Sann Suu Kyi was never going to be allowed to be leader, so this was just another Western intervention that failed abysmally, it also made her a war criminal of sorts because a genocide against the Rohingya occuredr under her watch, when she finally had enough of what was going on they imprisoned her. This is what happens when you groom leaders who won't survive a military regime.

The Western focus on enforcing democracy on every country around the world really doesn't work in places like Libya or Myanmar and we won't ever stop doing it with current governments in power in the West.

 

[sear]

When I was a boy I assumed benevolence was a good thing. But early on I was warned: "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

At family / parental level psychologist Joy Browne says: "We give our children roots and wings. The hard part is the wings."

Along that same theme, but scaled up to nation-size:

"American people are friends of Liberty everywhere, but custodians only of their own." John Adams

I surely wish the good people of Myanmar the best.

But sadly, I suspect any significant attempt to provide it for them would in the future result as in the past, more harm than good.