Military failing to find sufficient recruits despite conscription

Junta defence minister Adm. Tin Aung San pressed the officers under his command to exert more effort to increase the military’s manpower at a meeting on Monday, according to a military council statement. Tin Aung San, who chairs the military council’s central recruitment committee, also reiterated that the regime would take serious action against any eligible person who resists conscription, the statement said. He did not specify what actions would be taken. The military council has now established enough training centres to accommodate the first two batches of fresh recruits, in keeping with plans announced earlier this year to train the conscripts in batches of up to 5,000. However, the military has encountered difficulties in meeting the target number of new recruits, Tin Aung San said. He instructed the officers to take legal action against anyone resisting conscription and to make the necessary preparations to recruit the target number of recruits for the third batch. Earlier this year, the military council reactivated a conscription law first drafted in 2010 under Than Shwe, the previous military dictator. However, they have yet to issue their own, updated version of the law. The defence minister added that he had made four amendments to a new, planned conscription act and told the other officers present to send any other proposed amendments to him as soon as possible. The 2010 conscription law states that eligible citizens who evade or resist conscription are subject to prison sentences of up to three years. According to the law, the eligible age range of conscription for men is between 18 and 35 , amounting to a total of 6.3 million men within Myanmar. A Naypyitaw local with a 35-year-old son said he did not know how the military to respond to people resisting conscription, but suspected they would retaliate against the eligible conscript’s relatives. “If they can’t find the new recruit like they want, they will just pressure the family. If they try to force my son to join their army, I will tell him to flee and I will face the consequences,” the Naypyidaw local said. Mandalay locals said that the military had begun to sign up conscripts for the third batch in Mandalay and were pressuring families to come forward with their members who were eligible to join the army. A local man from Chanayethazan Township said that his neighbours had been pressured to hand their son over to recruiters. “The local administrator came to their house himself and told them that their son was on the list,” he said. “He told them their son would need to undergo a medical examination. When the family said their son was traveling, the administrator threatened that there would be consequences if he didn’t return within two weeks, and forced them to sign a pledge.” The same man said that the local regime administrator’s predecessor had lost his job when he failed to secure enough recruits for the first and second batches. A 22-year-old from Aungmyay Tharzan Township who was on the selection list for recruitment said authorities had also subject his family to pressure and surveillance. “The administrator said they can’t travel anymore. He came by repeatedly to check whether I was home,” the young man said. A woman living in Yedashe Township, Bago Region, said officers had been pressuring her family to volunteer a substitute recruit since the eligible members of her family were working abroad. “Men in the eligible age range have to flee their homes and hide at the farms when they come at night in their cars,” she said. A Mandalay local said that the families of the eligible members mostly wanted them to flee. “The parents are sending their children elsewhere to avoid being conscripted,” he said. “People can’t even sleep properly due to the conscription law on top of the scorching heat in Mandalay.” After many citizens evaded the regime’s first recruitment drive, the military responded by making more arrests for evasion as they recruited the second batch. Although women between 18 and 27 are eligible for conscription as well as men between 18 and 35 according to the conscription law, the military council said in February that it was not planning to recruit women yet. The military has prevented conscripts in the first and second batches from communicating with their families and has yet to release clear information about the salary and benefits afforded to conscripted soldiers. Junta-appointed administrators have assured families that their loved ones will not be sent to the frontlines, but whether the military will honour this promise remains to be seen. The fiercest battles currently involving the Myanmar military are concentrated in Rakhine State, where the ethnic armed organisation Arakan Army (AA, recently renamed the Arakha Army) has wrested control of nine of the state’s 17 townships from junta forces. “They’re facing losses in every part of the township and have too few troops left. Even after issuing the conscription law, they do not have enough manpower to attack the AA forces in Rakhine State,” said Pe Than, an analyst and former politician. Nonetheless, junta chief Sen.-Gen. Min Aung Hlaing gave a speech in late March vowing that the conscription law would allow the military would take back control of territories seized by anti-junta forces in Kachin, Karenni, northern Shan states as well as Rakhine States.

Military failing to find sufficient recruits despite conscription

The military regime’s top defence official directed officers to take stronger measures to enforce the conscription law, vowing severe penalties for those who evade mandatory service

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