KIA pressing Hpakant Township’s young people into involuntary service, locals allege

The recruitment practices of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) have drawn criticism and accusations of coercion from local civilians in the past two weeks in Kachin State’s Hpakant Township. KIA members allegedly detained at least seven youths, including some minors, on October 4 at Pyi Lone Chan Thar Pagoda in Hseng Taung village, Hpakant Township, a local man said. “They have been carrying out recruitment drives every day—often two or three times a day—taking both young men and women, including some aged around 16 or 17,” he said. The KIA allegedly impressed more young people in Hseng Taung on October 6, the full moon day of the lunar month of Thadingyut, which Buddhists in Myanmar celebrate as a holiday. Locals also said the armed group detained several youths, including some girls, the following day from at least three locations in Hseng Taung and the neighbouring village of Maw Shan. The KIA’s most intensive recruitment efforts seem to be targeting the Hseng Taung village tract, which is under its control, as well as around the villages of Hway Hkar some six miles south of Hpakant Township’s urban centre and Tar Ma Hkan, to the southwest. “I estimate that over 100 people have been recruited from Seik Mu alone,” the local man said, referring to a village in the same tract as Hway Hkar. “In Hway Hkar village, the streets are empty day and night now. In Tar Ma Hkan village, around 60 people were taken in a single day.” Hseng Taung is among the villages west of Hpakant’s urban wards that the KIA captured in September with help from its resistance allies in the Kachin People’s Defence Forces (PDF). Residents estimate that the KIA has recruited some 500 people into joining its ranks from the jade mining areas and the villages under its control in the township in the past two weeks. When asked about the KIA’s recruitment practices, the group’s spokesperson Colonel Naw Bu said they are occurring because this moment is a critical juncture in the fight to bring down Myanmar’s military dictatorship. “The recruitment of new troops is happening not just in Hpakant but throughout the country. The junta is conscripting soldiers, and every ethnic revolutionary group is recruiting as well, including our KIO/KIA,” Col. Naw Bu said, referring to the KIA’s political wing, the Kachin Independence Organisation. “As battles rage across the country, we should ask ourselves: Why am I not serving? Why am I not part of the revolution? Why haven’t I joined our KIO/KIA? These are questions we all need to ponder,” he added. Recruitment of new members is a responsibility in the struggle to overthrow the military regime, Col. Naw Bu continued, and the KIA was merely carrying out its obligations. Residents of several villages in the Seik Mu village tract including Hseng Taung said they were hesitant to leave their homes now out of fear of impressment and were having difficulty maintaining their livelihoods. “The revolution’s image will be tarnished as long as they mirror the junta’s tactics,” said the man from Hpakant Township who spoke with Myanmar Now, referring to a forcible conscription policy initiated by the military regime last year. The decade-old conscription law, revived by the junta in February 2024, requires at least two years of military service from all men between 18 to 35. “This will cost them public support,” he added. “Genuine support can only be earned by treating people with compassion, as if they were one’s own children. The revolution will only succeed with the people’s backing.” Hseng Taung village seen in a photo on social media after its capture by the KIA (Photo: KIO/KIA) Aung Hein Min—a member of the National League for Democracy elected to represent Hpakant Township in Myanmar’s parliament in 2020, before the military coup—published a post on his Facebook page condemning forced recruitment last Wednesday, also comparing it to the junta’s methods. “Issues like arbitrary taxation and forced recruitment are disgraceful,” he wrote. “Even if the organisation cannot be loved, it should not be one that people fear.” He added that anti-junta groups in territories retaken from junta forces should set the example of a governance system better than the military’s, encouraging people to invest more effort in the struggle for freedom. A man died on September 30 when he fell from a heap of mining refuse while trying to flee KIA recruiters at a jade mining site near Nam Hmaw village, a few miles west of Hseng Taung. Clashes have intensified in Hpakant Township since reigniting in May, when the military sent reinforcements to drive the KIA and its allies from the area. Local civilians have been injured by artillery amid fighting around the village of Long Hkin, east of the town centre. Miners work in open-cast jade mines near Hpakant in Kachin state on July 4, 2020. Dozens of jade miners have been buried in a mass grave after a landslide in northern Myanmar killed over 170, most of them migrant workers seeking their fortune in treacherous open-cast mines near the China border. (Photo by Ye Aung THU / AFP) Starting in March of last year, the KIA and its allies captured more than 15 towns in Kachin and northern Shan State in a broad-based offensive against the Myanmar military. Junta forces are now fighting to recapture territory on several fronts, with clashes ongoing in Waingmaw and Bhamo townships as well as Hpakant. The fighting in Bhamo has continued for more than nine months. Responding to unprecedented tactical pressures after the military’s conscription of new recruits since last year, fighting forces around the country in need of fresh troops have resorted to more aggressive recruitment methods in recent months The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army operating in northern Shan State—also commonly called the Kokang army—began impressing residents of the town of Hseni (Hsenwi) earlier this year. The Kokang army’s sometime ally, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), also announced plans in March to establish a garrison made up of recruits from the local population in Mogok, Mandalay Region, a gemstone-mining hub under its control. The Arakan Army, operating in Rakhine and Chin states, has also introduced a conscription system for both men and women over 18, requiring two years of service.

KIA pressing Hpakant Township’s young people into involuntary service, locals allege

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