19 April 2020 :

Myanmar began releasing tens of thousands of inmates on 17 April 2020 after President Win Myint announced an amnesty on the first day of the traditional New Year.
The Office of the President said in a statement that the unconditional amnesty of 24,896 prisoners was extended on humanitarian grounds as a gesture to welcome the New Year.
It added that all inmates will see their prison terms cut while the penalty for death row inmates has been converted to life imprisonment.
Life imprisonment will be reduced to 40-year jail terms, jail terms above 40 years will be reduced to 40 years and 40-year jail terms and shorter sentences will be cut by a quarter.
New York-based Human Rights Watch called on the Myanmar government in early April to reduce the population in its prisons to limit the spread of COVID-19 by releasing political prisoners, pre-trial detainees and inmates with high health risks.
“Prisoners in Myanmar’s horribly overcrowded and unsanitary prisons and labor camps face health hazards in the best of times, and the prison authorities are ill-equipped to treat those who become sick with COVID-19,” said Asia director Brad Adams.
“The authorities need to act immediately to avoid an entirely foreseeable health disaster,” he said in a statement released on 3 April.
According to HRW, Myanmar’s prison system, made up of 46 prisons and 50 labor camps nationwide, holds an estimated 92,000 prisoners but has an official capacity of only 66,000.
According to the Prisons Department, 87 foreign inmates were among those released on 17 April and will be deported to their respective countries.
Myanmar reported a total of 85 confirmed coronavirus cases as of 17 April.

16 January 2020 :

A local court in Ayeyarwady Region sentenced a former healthcare assistant to death by hanging on 13 January 2020 for murdering a schoolteacher and hiding the corpse after a love triangle turned violent in 2016.
Former healthcare assistant Than Zaw, who worked at a rural healthcare center for Payagon Village-tract in Hinthada Township, was found guilty of conspiring with his girlfriend to kill her ex-boyfriend Ko Aye Naing, a 34-year-old teacher of the Mayan Lay Village primary school in the same township, according to the Hinthada District Court.
The trial lasted three years and nine months. The court ruled on 13 January that the two defendants will be given the maximum penalties under the law.
The former healthcare assistant was sentenced to death by hanging under Article 302 (1.b) of the Penal Code, for premeditated murder. His girlfriend, Hnin Cherry, was sentenced to seven years in prison with hard labor under Article 201 for covering up the evidence of the murder, according to Deputy District Judge U Aung Thein Oo of Hinthada District Court.

03 March 2020 :

In Myanmar (formerly Burma) capital crimes are: murder, treason, military crimes, perjury resulting in the execution of an innocent defendant and other violent crimes. In 1993, Myanmar adopted a law that allows for the death penalty to be imposed for drug offences under certain circumstances.

Myanmar had been under military rule since 1988. However, no executions have taken place since then, and the authorities have continued its policy of commutation of death sentences to life imprisonment.

Following general elections held in November 2015, with the National League for Democracy winning a supermajority of seats in the national parliament, Aung San Suu Kyi became Minister of Foreign Affairs and State Councellor of Myanmar, de facto Prime Minister, in March and April 2016, respectively.

On 5 October 2016, the Parliament repealed the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act, which was widely applied by the former military government to stifle political activists by threatening harsh penalties, including a potential death sentence for leaking state secrets.

Under the repressive act anyone found guilty of committing treason – which included such activities as sabotage of railways or damaging telegraph poles – could face penalties including a lifetime in prison or a death sentence. 

National League for Democracy MP's, many former political prisoners themselves, have pushed for repeal of controversial law since taking power in March. The Pyithu Hluttaw Bill Committee proposed abolishing the law at the beginning of August, citing its misuse to arbitrarily detain civilians and politicians, but a Union Solidarity and Developmetn Party and a military MP defended the law, suggesting amendments to restrict the scope of its application instead. The proposal made its way to Myanmar's upper house on September 14.

On 22 January 2016, President Thein Sein pardoned another 102 prisoners, including 52 political prisoners. As well as those released, 77 prisoners who were sentenced to the death penalty have had their sentences commuted to life in prison. President's office spokesperson Zaw Htay indicated to AFP that the amnesty was to mark the beginning of the World Buddhist Peace Conference in Sagaing Region.

The amnesty – the sixth since the new Government assumed office on 30 March 2011, following decades of repression under previous military regimes – was granted as part of the national reconciliation process. Until the end of his mandate in March 2016, Thein Sein has pushed forward reforms in areas such as media, the Internet and political participation.

United Nations

In March 2016, the Government of Myanmar under the UPR of the UN Human Rights Council occurred on 6 November 2016, accepted recfour ommendations to consider ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Second Optional Protocol as well as abolishing de jure the death penalty but rejected nine reccomandations calling for the introduction of a moratorium on capital executions and the abolition of the death penalty.

On 17 December 2018, for the third time, Myanmar abstained on the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.