• by Mon Mon Myat (rangoon)
• Thursday, July 15, 2010
• Inter Press Service

They are novices at a Buddhist monastery just outside Rangoon, but they are also young boys who will always find time for a friendly game of football.

This day is no different, and visitors find them wearing sarongs as they play in the monastery’s compound. But an attempt at engaging them in conversation fails — though it is not because the boys, whose ages range between six and eight, are shy. The boys, it turns out, do not speak Burmese, since they come from Palaung, which is part of the Shan State in Burma’s north-east.

'They came from the ethnic insurgent area,' says U Kuthala, the monk who is in charge of the monastery’s young novices. 'Their parents sent them here in fear that they would be recruited by the local militia to become child soldiers.'

For decades, Burma’s military has been fighting with the country’s various ethnic minorities who have been demanding either autonomy or outright independence. According to Burma experts, there are about 30 ethnic armies in the country at present, although 18 of these have already signed ceasefire agreements with the government.

Burma is on the list of 20 nations worldwide in which recruitment of children for armies take place. It is also said to have the highest number of minors in its official army, with the count reaching as high as 70,000, or about one in five soldiers.

Burma’s ethnic armies, however, are also believed to be recruiting children for their forces, albeit in lesser number than the ‘Tatmadaw’, or the Burmese military. And while these armies say they take in only minors who volunteers the international group Human Rights Watch (HRW) say the children are forcibly taken. The Kachin Independence Army, it adds, even recruits girls.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says it has also been receiving hundreds of complaints concerning forced labour and underaged recruitment from different parts of the country. It is the only organisation allowed to tackle these issues in Burma.

ILO liaison officer Steve Marshall says the organisation has received more than 300 complaints in the last three years. 'Among the underaged recruitment complaints, about 160 were concerning Burmese army and the rest were the complaints regarding forced labour,' he says. 'The complaints came from all over the country (but) majority came from Rangoon, Bago, and the Delta region.'

'We have not received any formal complaints in respect to the ethnic armies,' he clarifies. '(Yet that) does not mean that they are not recruiting children, because they are recruiting children. We know that and (have) evidence of that.'

Seventeen-year-old Zaw Min, for instance, says that when he went recently for a short break in his hometown in one of Burma’s border areas, recruiters for an ethnic army tried to persuade him to go with them. But the teener, who goes to a Rangoon high school, says he refused and quickly returned here.

He says becoming a soldier for any army is not in his future. 'I want to study economics at the university and run my own business someday,' says the teenager.

Zaw Min was lucky that the recruiters did not take him by force, which some rights advocates insist happens often in Burma.

The ILO considers the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for use in armed conflict as one of the worst forms of forced labour. Burmese laws also prohibit the recruitment of minors for combat, but these apparently have not stopped its own military from continuing the practice.

In a 2007 report called ‘Sold to be Soldiers: The Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers in Burma’, HRW says that boys as young as 11 are trained by the military for about 18 weeks before they are sent right into combat or are made to commit atrocities, such as the burning of homes.

The ILO has been working with Burma’s military rulers toward the elimination of forced labour, including the recruitment of children for combat. It recently released a brochure in Burmese that explained what forced labour means and the law against this practice. The brochure also detailed how people can file complaints without fear of reprisal.

‘We received one complaint from someone who read the brochure two days after we released it,' says Marshall. 'But the objective is not to get complaints. The objective is actually to stop having forced labour and stop having children being recruited.'

So far, he says, 'in terms of underaged recruitment complaints, the government discharged 105 young boys and sent them back to their families.'

Marshall says the ILO and United Nations workers have had discussions with a number of ethnic armies that yielded reassurances from the latter that they would not recruit children.

In a 2002 report, the HRW also reported that the Shan State Army (South), Karen National Liberation Army, and Karenni Army have stated policies against recruiting children under the age of 18. But, said the HRW, these nevertheless accept minors who volunteer to join their forces.

Marshall himself admits that the prospect of child soldiers continuing to be used in state and non-state armies 'is pretty high particularly if there is further (conflict)'. 'In that situation,' he says, 'there is tendency for young people to actually be taken into the services.'

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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