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Myanmar Junta Forcibly Recruiting Children into its forces
The Human Rights Watch in its report titled “Sold to Be Soldiers: The Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers in Burma” released in New York, US on October 31, 2007 said that the Myanmar Junta facing the shortage of staff in its armed forces has been recruiting many children some as young as age 10 into its armed forces. Myanmar military recruits children to meet the unrelenting demands for new recruits required for its continued army expansion, for filling the positions vacated by deserters and for not having the new volunteers. Non-state armed groups including ethnic-based insurgent groups also recruit and use child soldiers though in far smaller numbers.
The Myanmar Junta recruiter provide the child soldiers with 18 weeks of military training, and then sent them into combat situations within days of their deployment to battalions. Sometimes the Junta forced the child soldiers to engage in human rights abuses such as burning villages and using civilians for forced labor. They punished the child soldiers if the child soldiers attempted to escape or desert.
Human Rights Watch expressed concern over the possibility of making children even more vulnerable to recruitment after the Junta’s recent crackdown on monks and civilian demonstrators.
