MYANMAR announced the release of thousands of prisoners, including scores of Chinese loggers, Thursday in a mass amnesty aimed at promoting “goodwill,” officials said.

    Authorities acting on the instructions of President Thein Sein ordered some 6,966 detainees — 210 of them foreigners — to be freed across the country after they had been “well disciplined,” according to a statement on the Ministry of Information website.

    The move is to promote “goodwill and is aimed at keeping a friendly relationship between countries,” it said.

    The release included all of the 155 Chinese nationals handed long jail sentences for illegal logging in northern Myanmar near their shared border earlier this month, according to a home affairs ministry official who asked to remain anonymous because he was unauthorized to speak to the press.

    “More than 150 Chinese will be released in the amnesty,” he said without giving further details.

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei confirmed the release at a routine press conference Thursday and said that the Chinese nationals will return to China on Friday.

    “We attach high importance to the measures taken by Myanmar,” Hong said.

    On July 22, the Myitkyina district court in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State sentenced the loggers to more than 10 years in prison for violating a 1963 law against destroying public property.

    “We maintained close communication with the Myanmar side on the handing over of these people after the court made the judgment,” Hong added.

    It was not immediately clear if political prisoners were among those freed in the release, the latest in a series of amnesties under the reformist government that have seen sentences quashed for hundreds of dissidents.

    (SD-Agencies)