Myanmar’s New Year amnesty on 17 April is dominating social media but not with celebration. On the day, Min Aung Hlaing ordered the release of more than 4,300 prisoners to mark the traditional new year The Messenger, yet the number of  political detainees among them remains strikingly low. PPNM says only around 160 political prisoners have been confirmed released so far.

Users on Facebook, users are calling the move absurd and politically calculated. “An illegitimate president who stole power is now granting a pardon to the rightful president — Min Aung Hlaing has completely lost it,” one user wrote. Another commented, “Power-mad Min Aung Hlaing released the hostage national leaders as a political chess move, but whether it grants him legitimacy remains uncertain. We, the Spring Revolution comrades, will not be misled — we know the difference between what matters and what doesn’t. We push forward, we fight on.”

Others dismissed any gratitude toward the military: “U Win Myint was only imprisoned inside Myanmar — if he were abroad, he’d still be president. All political prisoners were innocent from the start. The military releasing them deserves no thanks.”

Meanwhile, award-winning filmmaker Shin Daewe was seen walking free from Insein Prison on Friday morning, while Min Aung Hlaing also commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment in a blanket order.

Yet Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s most prominent political prisoner, remains detained. The Institute for Strategy and Policy Myanmar has noted that fewer than 14 percent of those released in successive amnesty rounds since the coup have been political prisoners.