ICC Note:
Myanmar’s Prisons Department says it will be to allow inmates to conduct religious activities one time per month beginning with the new fiscal year. Prisons will have religious activities to “pay homage to Buddha” and people of other faiths “will also be allowed to practice their own religion.” Myanmar is mostly Buddhist and has spent decades clashing with and oppressing Muslim and Christian minorities close to its borders.
4/28/2017 Myanmar (Myanmar Times) – “It aims to help prisoners have more peaceful minds. We can’t say what the exact schedule for the religious activities is, but we’ve already given out instructions that religious activities are going to be provided monthly.
“In the past, there were not much religious activities in prisons. But now we are going to provide religious activities every month,” said U Min Tun Soe last week.
In previous years, doing monthly religious activities and opening of meditation centres were allowed in Ohbo, Tharyarwady and Insein prions, while other prisons only allowed inmates to carry out religious activities on days of religious significance.
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