The Norwegian Burma Committee welcomes the release of the former student leaders Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Htay Kway, Min Zeya and Myint Aye, who have been detained without charge and at an unknown location since September last year. The five well-known prisoners of conscience are released shortly before the UN Security Council will decide on a proposed resolution on Burma. (11-JAN-07)

Based on the Norwegian Burma Committee´s press release, this article has been edited and prepared for publication hre by HRH F / Niels Jacob Harbitz.

Second only to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, Min Ko Naing is the best known and most important opposition leader in Burma. Prior to his release in 2004, he was imprisoned for 16 years, suffering both isolation and torture. In 2001, he was awarded the Norwegian student´s international peace prize. All the five prisoners now released were student leaders during the people´s uprising in 1988 and are leading members of an informal network called the 1988 generation´s students, a network whose importance has grown among the opposition in Burma in recent years.

-Eager to please
-It is very encouraging that Min Ko Naing and the other student leaders have been Aase Sand 2 100.jpgreleased, but it is also clear that there are strategic reasons as to why this happens right now. On Tuesday, USA submitted a proposal for a resolution on Burma for the UN Security Council, that will be considered for adoption soon. The releases are clearly an attempt for the side of Burmese authorities to please the members of the Security Council, with a view to avoid a majority vote in favour of adopting it, says NBC´s information officer Åse Sand, right.

Nearly 3.000 released, but only 43 political prisoners among them
Key elements of the proposed resolution deal exactly with the need for political prisoners to be released, that the junta must initiate a dialogue with all political leaders and the ethnic minorities, and that the UN is given an active role in the national reconciliation process in Burma. In total, the military regime in Burma released 2.831 prisoners on the country´s Independence Day, 4 January. The junta is obviously aware that such mass releases don´t go unnoticed, even if only 43 of the close to 3.000 were political prisoners, concludes Sand.