Yangon: To celebrate the Buddhist New Year, Myanmar's junta announced on Monday that it would free more than 3,000 prisoners. However, it did not say whether this would include those who had been imprisoned as part of its bloody crackdown on dissent.

Since its coup more than two years ago, which rocked the nation and sparked numerous clashes with anti-coup fighters, the military has detained thousands of people.

Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of the junta, "pardoned 3,015 prisoners... to mark Myanmar New Year, for the peaceful mind of the people, and on humanitarian grounds," according to a statement from the junta's information team.

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The statement stated that those who reoffend will be required to serve the remainder of their sentence with an additional penalty.

It was not specified if journalists imprisoned for covering the coup or anti-junta protesters would be released. The military junta released about 23,000 prisoners soon after its coup, prompting concerns from some rights organisations that the move would give room to military opponents and wreak havoc on local communities.

To celebrate the traditional Buddhist New Year holiday, which in previous years has been marked by joyful celebrations and city-wide water fights, the nation typically grants amnesty to thousands of prisoners.

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However, after a military airstrike on a village in a hotspot for resistance that the media and locals claimed killed more than 170 people, streets in many major cities were silent in protest this year.

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According to a local monitoring organisation, more than 21,000 people have been detained since the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi's government in February 2021.

Suu Kyi has been imprisoned since the coup's first hours. The 77-year-old Nobel laureate was sentenced to 33 years in prison by the junta in December after concluding a string of secret trials that rights organisations have denounced as a sham. The United Nations reports that since the coup, at least 170 journalists have been detained.