Born and raised in Thailand, yet drafted into Myanmar’s army

On the morning of September 9, Daw Than woke up early and placed offerings of food, water, and flowers in front of the Buddhist altar in her humble home in Ranong, Thailand. According to her beliefs, it was an auspicious day—the ninth day of the ninth month. But that wasn’t the only reason it was special. Soon, she knew, she would be seeing her beloved son, who was due to be released that day from prison. Two years earlier, 29-year-old Khun Koe had been found guilty of stealing palm oil from the plantation where he had been working at the time. But within hours he would be returning to the loving arms of his mother, who was also a plantation worker. She couldn’t wait to bring him home so she could cook him his favourite foods. With her heart full of joy at the thought, she hastily set off for the half-hour car ride to Ranong Prison, where she would soon be seeing her only son as a free man again. When she arrived at the prison, it was bustling with activity. The prison authorities looked busy, so she she tried to find her son by herself. When she finally spotted him among the throng of prisoners, she saw that he was being taken to a prison van. Confused, she wondered why they were taking him away when they were supposed to be releasing him. It took her a while to realise what was happening: Her son was being shipped to Kawthaung, a town just across the border in Myanmar. “He was among those being sent back to Myanmar. Once he was taken to Kawthaung, there was nothing I could do to bring him back,” said Daw Than, speaking in the distinctive Burmese of her her native Dawei. All she could do was return to her home. In the dim light, her mind swirled with questions: Why was her son, born and raised in Thailand, and with no knowledge of the Burmese language, being sent to Myanmar? And what would happen to him there? “I can’t find the words to describe how I felt. I couldn’t eat or sleep. All I could do was sit and cry, thinking I might never see my son again,” she said. “He is all I have.” Khun Koe and his mother, Daw Than, sit in their home in Ranong (Myanmar Now) A high price for freedom Khun Koe was also at a complete loss that day. Unable to understand Burmese, he had to rely on a fellow deportee to make sense of what was happening to him. This was how he learned that they were being transported to the Infantry Battalion (IB) 262 base in Kawthaung. Once there, a Myanmar army officer informed them that they were being conscripted into the military. “They gave us haircuts as soon as we arrived. They told us we couldn’t go home and that we had to join the army. There were more than 100 of us,” Khun Koe said in Thai. When Myanmar Now met him in his mother’s home, he was still sporting a military-style haircut. A stocky man, standing 5 feet 8 inches tall, he said he was “terrified” when the reality of his situation finally dawned on him. Determined to avoid becoming cannon fodder for Myanmar’s brutal military regime, he started thinking about how he could avoid this fate. It didn’t take him long to learn that the best way out was to pay a certain sum of money for a medical exemption. Borrowing a phone from another prisoner, he called his mother in Thailand to ask her to arrange the money for his release. The person who contacted Daw Than demanded a fee of 45,000 Thai baht (approximately US $1,300) to ensure that Khun Koe failed his medical examination. Knowing it might be the only way she would ever see her son alive again, she agreed. “I had to borrow the money from relatives. My job at the palm-oil plantation pays only 200 baht a day, sometimes less. So I had no choice but to borrow the money, with interest,” Daw Than said. The money was then transferred to a friend in Kawthaung, who passed it along to the junta officer who promised to get Khun Koe out of military service. Daw Than believed that this would be enough to save her soon, but she was mistaken. After the payment was made, Khun Koe was taken to a house in Kawthaung to await his return to Thailand. While he was there, other officials turned up and also demanded money. “They threatened to detain him again if they didn’t get 10,000 baht each. There were six of them, so it came to 60,000 baht,” said Thar Kyaw, chair of the Ranong-based Meikta Thahaya Self-Administered Funeral Welfare Association, which assisted Daw Than with her efforts to extract her son from Kawthaung. “There were so many groups,” he added. “I have no idea who they were.” The Thai immigration office in Ranong, where many Myanmar nationals are held (Myanmar Now) Unwilling recruits Fortunately, by negotiating through the police officer who had arranged for Khun Koe’s release, Daw Than was able to reduce the amount of extra money she had to pay to 20,000 baht. But that still left her a total of 65,000 baht—nearly $1,900—in debt. As someone with such a low income, this was an enormous hardship. Daw Than said that her son was deported to Myanmar because he didn’t have a birth certificate or Thai identification documents, which is often the case with children born in Thailand to migrants. Most in this situation are classified according to their ancestry, even if they have never set foot in the country of their parents’ birth. Making matters worse is the fact that the Myanmar authorities no longer have any interest in where the deported detainees come from. Their only concern now is to sign them up for military service, according to Thar Kyaw, “In the past, people were sent back to wherever they were from, or a relative could come and bail them out. Now, everyone is sent straight to the army,” he said, noting that this forced recruitment drive went into full swing in Kawthaung last September. Since the military introduced conscription nearly a year ago, the number of young people fleeing to Thailand—often illegally—has increased significantly. In Ranong, this is reflected in the fact that mass deportations now take place at least once or twice a month, rather than once every few months, according to local sources. This has made the town an important source of unwilling recruits into Myanmar’s military. It has also made Thar Kyaw’s efforts to assist migrant families more urgent than ever. “Every time they deport a group of detainees, there are at least seven or eight who are from here, whose relatives come to us with photographs of their loved ones, asking for help,” said Thar Kyaw. “It used to be enough for their employers to vouch for them. Now, however, the Ranong immigration office no longer accepts this, and just sends them back to Myanmar,” he added. For Daw Than and her son, who got caught up in this impersonal system, which completely ignores the backgrounds of those who often end up in the junta’s clutches, the only recourse was to pay whatever was demanded of them. “It will take us a long time to repay our debt, but the people who took our money got it in just one day,” she said. “I wish they could understand how hard it is to make a living here. I want them to put themselves in our place and think about how they would feel if their own children faced the same situation.”

Born and raised in Thailand, yet drafted into Myanmar’s army

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