UN welcomes Burma prison releases

Min Ko Naing: Freed from jail aged 42, after 15 years

The United Nations Special Envoy to Burma, Razali Ismail, has hailed a decision by the country's military government to free political detainees.

He told the BBC that the news that nearly 4,000 prisoners of all types would be freed was "quite exceptional".

But he added that he did not expect opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to be released from house arrest.

The junta began releases last week, freeing dissident Min Ko Naing and about 700 others, the opposition said.

"There are good numbers of releases of prisoners who have been held for political positions, important prisoners and that [...] is a good sign," Mr Razali told BBC World Service.

Jailed leader

The UN envoy said it was "highly improbable" that Aung San Suu Kyi would be released.

The Nobel Prize-winning leader of the opposition National League for Democracy party has spent nine of the past 15 years under some form of detention.

She has repeatedly said she would be willing to be the last person to be released in order to see all of the other estimated 1,300 political detainees freed.

Her party won a landslide victory in 1990 but has never been allowed to govern by the military, which has run the nation since 1962.

Prison 'dreamland'

The vast majority of those freed last week were petty criminals.

However, Min Ko Naing was jailed 15 years ago for leading 1988 pro-democracy student protests crushed by the military.

He said his release 15 years later felt like awakening "from dreamland".

State-run media in Burma said those released had been wrongly charged by the National Intelligence Bureau.