Myanmar frees prisoners ahead of Martyr's day

YANGON, Myanmar -- Myanmar has freed 11 more opposition members, including a writer close to pro-democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi.

Despite improvements the movements of Aung San Suu Kyi remain restricted

Their release from prison on Wednesday is the latest sign of warming relations between the military government and Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) since October, when the ruling generals began secret talks with her.

The NLD won Myanmar's last general election in 1990 by a landslide but was never allowed to govern. Over the last decade its members have faced harassment, arrest and imprisonment.

Myanmar's most prominent dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi herself has been held under de facto house arrest since September and only a handful of foreign diplomats have been given access to her.

While no information has been released on how talks are going, since they started, 151 NLD detainees have been freed and the party has been given permission to reopen 18 of its branch offices.

Watching ceremony

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Wednesday's releases come on the eve of a major national ceremony marking Martyrs' Day, the anniversary of the assassination of Aung San Suu Kyi's father, independence hero General Aung San, and eight senior officials on July 19, 1947.

This year's ceremony is being closely watched to see whether Aung San Suu Kyi attends.

Despite her rift with the ruling generals, she has attended the ceremony in recent years, even when she was being held in house arrest between 1989 and 1995.

But diplomats and officials said last week Aung San Suu Kyi had declined to attend Thursday's ceremony.

If she fails to appear, it would be widely interpreted as a sign that the talks with the government are not going well.

Noted writer

In the latest in a series of conciliatory moves by the government, four elected members of parliament and a prominent female writer were freed.

San San Nwe, a leading member of a writers' group in the NLD, was arrested in 1994 and sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of fabricating and circulating false news.

She was considered one of Myanmar's most prominent journalists and this year was awarded the Golden Pen of Freedom prize by the World Association of Newspapers.

According to an NLD official, 34 NLD MPs remain detained in prisons around the country.

On Monday, Amnesty urged the military regime to release more political prisoners, saying that there are still at least 1,800 under detention despite recent releases.

Hundreds of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners are still held, including politicians, students, doctors, farmers, teachers, journalists, writers, lawyers, comedians and housewives serving long prison terms in very poor conditions, Amnesty said.

Myanmar is also known as Burma.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.