Jeffery Soe is filled with fear because of the ruling Myanmar military’s recent diktat on compulsory military service for young people.
The junta’s February move to impose conscription starting from mid-April to fight against armed rebel forces has sent shock waves among youths like Soe, a Catholic and aspiring model, who lives in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city.
The 2010 People’s Military Service Law mandates two years of military service for all men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 in emergencies. Although the law was enacted a decade ago, the emergency provision was not implemented until now.
The aim is to enroll 5,000 people per month. Those who evade enlistment will have to face a five-year jail term and a fine.
“It is bad news and means sending us to the front line where we could be killed,” said 23-year-old Soe.
He said his mother is working hard to send him out of Myanmar and prevent his conscription.
“As soon as she wakes in the morning she starts trying to find ways for me to leave the country for neighboring Thailand,” Soe said.
She is always “surfing the internet and chatting with her friends,” to explore opportunities for him, he added.
Thousands are rushing to get their passport as part of a plan to leave the country. Two women died and one was hurt in a pre-dawn stampede as people rushed to get a place in a passport queue in Mandalay on Feb.19.
Recently, Soe’s parents accompanied him to apply for his passport. He managed to get it by paying extra money to a local agent.
Soe has already started learning the rudiments of the Thai language.
“I will leave for Thailand legally,” the young man said.
The conscription plan by the military, which came to power after toppling the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, is a knee-jerk response to the gains made by armed ethnic groups in armed clashes in the past few months.
The regime has lost many regional bases since October last year and many soldiers have been killed or wounded and the morale of the remaining troops is very low.
According to the National Unity Government, which calls itself the government-in-exile, armed rebel groups now control more than 60 percent of Myanmar’s territory.
Hence, the military is desperate to replenish its troops and rebuild the organization.
The junta, however, has clarified that women will not be conscripted for the time being.
But Maria Naw, who will turn 18 next year, is in a panic.
Naw is staying in a Church-run boarding school in central Myanmar and burns the midnight oil for her Grade 12 studies. Her school is close to the junta’s administrative office.
“Whenever I go out and see troops, I am afraid that I might be called up. It is a very precarious situation and I frequently wake up in the night,” Naw added.
Joseph Reh, 27, a displaced youth from the eastern Kayah state, said, “I don’t go out after 6 p.m. as I fear I might be forced into conscription as it happened in other towns.”
Reh is currently staying in southern Shan state after fighting intensified in Kayah state since last November.
“We don’t want to fight for the military,” Reh said. But his parents, who are retired, cannot afford to send him to Thailand or Singapore, he added.
“I have been wondering whether to go into hiding to escape the conscription,” Reh said.
At least 7,000 people have applied for a visa with the Thailand embassy in Yangon, the commercial hub of the country, while thousands have set foot on Thai soil through illegal ways.
The junta has already initiated the conscription work by collecting the names of young men and women.
Defense Minister Tin Aung San said on March 4 that the government will soon establish training facilities.
Nearly 400 civil society organizations have sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council to put pressure on the military junta to end the forced conscription law.
Tom Andrews, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, warned that the military junta is becoming “an even greater threat to civilians”.
“The conscription law is “an act of desperation to achieve short-term survival” by the military, Ye Myo Hein, a visiting scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace wrote in an article on Feb.26.
More youths like Soe will flee the country, more youngsters like Reh may end up in the company of armed rebels and more girls like Naw will be deprived of sleep in the night as Myanmar’s ruthless military is going ahead with compulsory military service.
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