Monk who led junta-trained militias condemns Myanmar junta’s abductions for forced recruitment

A pro-military, nationalist Buddhist monk known as a leader and recruiter for junta-trained Pyu Saw Htee militias admitted this week that the military had been abducting youth for forced military service. According to the monk, commonly known by the epithet ‘Pauk Ko Taw’, two brothers from Htauk Shar Kone village in Mandalay Region’s Tada-U Township were taken captive on August 16 while on their way to Mandalay to take construction jobs. The two brothers were among around 100 civilians the army had abducted to use as porters, the monk said, adding that 45 of the captives had been forced into military training after being detained. The two brothers from Htauk Shar Kone had been paying 45,000 kyat (US $14) a month each to junta-appointed village administrators for protection from forced recruitment, according to Pauk Ko Taw. However, he added, when they attempted to negotiate their release with military officials running the Tada-U Township office of the junta’s general administration department three days after their capture, they were rebuffed. “They were already taken to the barracks today,” the monk said, citing a major familiar with the matter. Pauk Ko Taw, 39, reported the incident to the junta-controlled outlet Myanmar National Post on August 19, but his post was later removed from the outlet’s social media page. Pauk has been instrumental in organising junta-armed and trained militias to support the military’s efforts to maintain control in Myanmar’s rural areas, and his testimony is a rare acknowledgment from a pro-junta source that the regime has been implementing conscription by brute force. Various outlets have reported incidents of junta troops abducting civilians from the streets to serve as porters, but the junta has typically dismissed these claims as fabrications. The monk, who commonly uses his epithet Pauk Ko Taw in public communications, was ordained with the name Ariyawuntha. He is one of the younger leaders and organisers of ultranationalist, pro-military Buddhist monks’ groups known colloquially as Ma Ba Tha, a Burmese acronym standing for Association for the Protection of Race and Religion. Pauk Ko Taw giving a Dharma sermon at a military barracks The original Ma Ba Tha, a movement supported by the military under the transitional regime of former president Thein Sein, was known for anti-Muslim rhetoric and was disbanded by religious authorities in 2017 after spreading anti-minority messages. The movement’s leaders and participants later shifted their focus to supporting the Myanmar military and opposing the National League for Democracy (NLD) party. After the military coup in February 2021, Pauk Ko Taw took a prominent role in organising pro-junta rallies while other ultranationalist leaders such as Wirathu—another monk and central figure in the Ma Ba Tha who was infamous for anti-minority rhetoric and charged with alleged sedition against Aung San Suu Kyi—were in prison. During a pro-junta rally in Mandalay’s Pyin Oo Lwin Township on January 16, Pauk Ko Taw called for the junta chief Sen-Gen Min Aung Hlaing to step down as commander-in-chief of the military and be replaced by Vice-Sen-Gen Soe Win. Following this appeal, junta officials detained and questioned Pauk Ko Taw for a few hours before releasing him. Pauk Ko Taw also became a prominent leader of the junta-armed Pyu Saw Htee ‘people’s militias’ while still wearing his monk’s robes, and was assigned by the junta to supervise the training of militias based in central Myanmar. This month, at a graduation ceremony for Pyu Saw Htee commando trainees in Mandalay Region, Pauk Ko Taw gave remarks calling for harsh suppression of the military’s opponents. Pauk Ko Taw gives remarks calling for harsh suppression of the Myanmar military’s opponents at a Pyu Saw Htee militia graduation ceremony in Mandalay Region in August Junta generals in Mandalay Region have shown reverence to Pauk Ko Taw, recently inviting him to deliver Dharma sermons in military barracks and give words of encouragement to patients in military hospitals injured during offensive operations by anti-junta forces such as the Brotherhood Alliance. Young people go missing off the streets In early August, two local civilians said junta police detained and conscripted five young people at a restaurant near a toll gate on a road outside Naypyitaw, the junta’s administrative capital and home to many of its top officers. The two abductees, aged between 18 and 30, were migrant workers from Sagaing and Magway regions. A man familiar with the incident explained, “People from upper Myanmar who were listed for conscription fled to Naypyitaw to find jobs. When they registered as overnight guests, their names and identification numbers matched the ones on the conscription list, leading to their detention.” Some restaurants in Naypyitaw have been asked to provide personnel for conscription, putting significant pressure on owners and staff. A staff member at one restaurant said that the owner had advised him to “find a house to run to when they come to take you.” Restaurants in Shwepyithar Township, Yangon, have also reportedly received orders to close by 10pm, and administrators have threatened nighttime raids in wards failing to provide enough recruits for the conscription quotas, a resident said. “The administrators won’t help if someone gets caught while out at night, so we’ve been told to stay home after dark,” the resident added. A man in his 20s was asked about his age and then detained in Ywar Thit village, located along the Yangon-Mandalay highway, in the last week of July. “He was travelling on a motorcycle when a military vehicle parked nearby. The officers stopped his motorcycle, asked for his age, and then loaded him onto their vehicle. After a while, he was taken away,” said a local man who was familiar with the incident. His family members were unwilling to make a report at the police station out of fear for their own safety, and only reported the incident to the general administrator. An administrator in Naypyitaw said young men were being taken captive because they had not received the conscription lists from their respective wards. “The administrators could not provide enough people because some had fled. In certain wards, there is legal impunity for abducting people seen at night. This might be one case of that practice,” he said. According to two local sources, young people in Okkyin Township—located in eastern Bago Region on the border with the Naypyitaw Union Territory—are being stopped and questioned about their age and identification documents. Those in the eligible age range for conscription are being taken away, they said. Another local man recalled one such incident from early July. “A man was asked for his age and said he was 38. They checked his identification card, confirmed his age, and let him go. However, a young man in the vicinity was taken because he was under the conscription age limit,” the local man said. While such anecdotal accounts are widespread, Myanmar Now was unable to confirm them independently. Detained for conscription in Mandalay Since reviving conscription, pro-junta administrators in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-most populous city, have gone door to door listing residents’ names and held random name drawings at local administrative offices to generate recruitment lists. As the roundups of new recruits became more frequent and young people began to flee their homes to evade mandatory service, the authorities intensified their efforts. They made surprise visits to civilian homes, compared households’ inhabitants and guests with local registries and set up blockades and checkpoints around the wards to prevent young potential recruits from fleeing. They also began detaining people at the checkpoints to use as porters, abducting people from their homes at gunpoint during nighttime raids, and taking groups of travellers captive on the roads, according to local civilians. Nearly 200 civilians have been coerced into military service by various means in Mandalay this month, Mandalay resistance forces told Myanmar Now, adding that after a few days of military training at an army camp near Mandalay Hill, the draftees were sent to the frontlines in combat zones. Some of the incidents occurred recently. A group of armed men led by the ward administrator reportedly took a 20-year-old man from his home on Pan Satt Bali Street in the city’s Maha Aungmyay Township at gunpoint on August 15. Junta personnel blocked the entrances and exits to wards in Chanayethazan and Aungmyay Thazan townships in Mandalay on Wednesday afternoon, and authorities conducted door-to-door household inspections, forcibly taking some youth for the military, Mandalay-based resistance sources said. Ko Naing, 30, a resident of Mandalay’s Maha Aungmyay Township, was driving a monastery vehicle on an errand for a Sagaing-based abbot on the night of August 20, when he was stopped somewhere in Sagaing and taken in for military service, according to a source close to his family. There are reports that Ko Naing is being held at Light Infantry Division 33 base in Sagaing, but his family has lost contact with him. During a raid in Chanayethazan Township, a junta team member threatened that they would set fire to the neighbourhood if the youth living there tried to evade recruitment, members of the resistance group MDY-Revolution told Myanmar Now. The resistance groups said they were still investigating the number of people taken.

Monk who led junta-trained militias condemns Myanmar junta’s abductions for forced recruitment

The nationalist monk, commonly referred to by the epithet ‘Pauk Ko Taw’ and known for supporting the formation of junta-armed Pyu Saw Htee groups, reported that authorities took two young civilian men captive and pressed them into military training

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