Myanmar’s military rulers have pardoned or dropped charges against 8,665 people locked up for opposing the army rule as the country prepares for next month’s elections, according to state media.

The announcement on Thursday paves the way for prisoners to vote in upcoming polls that human rights groups have criticised as a sham process.

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Myanmar’s military seized power in a 2021 coup that caused a civil war, but it has scheduled elections to start in December and trumpeted them as a return to normalcy for the Southeast Asian nation.

The order includes the reduction of sentences for 3,085 people convicted for comments “that could cause fear or spread fake news”.

Charges against another 5,580 people still at large have also been dropped.

It was not immediately clear how many of those covered are political detainees, or when the releases would occur.

Speaking on Wednesday before the amnesty was formally announced, Myanmar military government spokesperson Zaw Min Tun said the measures were designed to help all eligible voters cast their ballots “freely and fairly” on December 28.

An official from Yangon’s Insein Prison, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to release information, told The Associated Press news agency on Thursday that prisoner releases would immediately begin, but he did not provide the numbers and names of inmates to be freed.

In some past amnesties, releases have taken several days.

Outside of Insein Prison, which for decades has served as the main place of detention for political prisoners, dozens of people gathered on Thursday morning to welcome friends and relatives who were being freed under an amnesty.

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It was not immediately clear whether the prisoner release would include the 80-year-old former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held virtually incommunicado since the military’s seizure of power in February 2021. She is serving a 27-year sentence.

Critics have asserted that the election will be neither free nor fair because there is no free media and most of the leaders of Aung San Suu Kyi’s dissolved National League for Democracy party have been arrested.

“It’s wonderful news for the prisoners,” Mark Farmaner, director of the human rights group Burma Campaign UK, wrote on X.

But “as expected” political prisoners are being used “for public relations purposes by Burmese military to try to build a fake narrative of reform” ahead of the polls, he added.

Some 22,708 political detainees, including Aung San Suu Kyi, were in detention as of Wednesday, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an independent organisation that keeps detailed tallies of arrests.