Myanmar army uses sham job announcements to trap young men into military service

Struggling with diminishing manpower amid intensifying conflict, Myanmar’s military has turned to luring young men with fraudulent work advertisements on social media, deceiving them into forced military enlistment. The targets of the job announcements—men aged 18 to 25—have reportedly contacted the military in the belief that they were applying for civilian employment, only to be conscripted into the army and sent to the front lines. Myanmar Now spoke with two men who underwent this ordeal in recent years, one of whom recently surrendered to the resistance forces in central Myanmar. Fearing for their families’ safety, they insisted on the use of pseudonyms to protect their safety. After speaking to the two young forced enlistees, a Myanmar Now reporter contacted the army officer who had deceived the two young men into serving in the army and, by pretending to be a jobseeker, confirmed that the military was still engaged in the scheme. The process generally begins with posts on Facebook announcing employment vacancies for drivers, mechanics, or factory workers. The adverts promise pay, training, and accommodations. Facebook accounts under the names “U Kyaw” and “Van Damme Van Damme” have posted many of the fake want ads, circulating them on jobseekers’ Facebook groups for extended periods. U Kyaw posted the same job advertisements 23 times between October of last year and June of this year in a Facebook group set up for discussing “Jobs near Mingaladon and Hmawbi townships,” which has an online membership of over 30,000. Some of military’s key bases in Yangon Region–including air bases–are located in Mingaladon and Hmawbi townships. The posts advertise for employees without disclosing any connection to the army. They promise training in mechanics, in driving—including the operation of commercial or construction vehicles like excavators—and even in engineering. From interview to conscription Thura, 20, decided to move from his hometown in Bago Region to Yangon in November 2022 to look for a new job. After reaching the phone number given in a job advertisement on Facebook, he was invited for an in-person interview, then scheduled for an appointment at a tea shop near Kyaik Ka Lawt Pagoda in Yangon's Mingaladon Township, Thura said. Thura realised too late that the job interview was actually a recruitment procedure for enlisting new soldiers in the army. “They asked me where I wanted to work while employed at the company and they promised a [monthly] salary of 230,000 kyat (US$109). They said that the salary was based on education, so I would have to attend a training course. What they didn't tell me was that it was military training,” Thura recounted. This salary is within the range paid to sergeants, according to salary scales published by the Myanmar military. Thura also said he saw around 50 other applicants at the interview location. Thura said that job applicants who did not bring photo identification were urged to take a passport photo in the tea shop. The recruiters asked for some personal information, and after about half an hour, gave job applicants identification cards without taking fingerprints. After that, the recruiters invited the job seekers to get into civilian vehicles, saying they would show them around the company's compound. Thura and the job applicants realised that they were being enlisted in the army only after being brought to the army’s Recruitment Camp No. 1 in Da Nyin Gone, part of Yangon’s Insein Township. “They took our personal documents and confiscated our phones,” Thura said. “I was taken to a shop in the army compound. They told us that we could not leave the army, and that if we did, our families would suffer. They said we had to join, and they threatened us with knives and guns inside the shop,” he added. Except for being forced to stand in line three times a day, the group of new enlistees reportedly spent their days locked in a room. Food was brought to them and they were only allowed to eat it in the room where they were confined, Thura said, comparing the situation to that of prisoners. He added that he witnessed torture every day. An advertisement for a job vacancy posted on the street in Yangon. The text promises employee training in operating mechanical equipment, driving, surveying, further education, or other areas. The advertisement also specifies age and identification requirements for applying (Facebook). “We were slapped in the morning when we stood in line, and they repeated this in the afternoon and evening lines,” he said. "When some of us said we wanted to return home, they grabbed two of the men, and with their hands tied behind their backs they slapped them on the cheeks and ears, hard. They also beat people with sticks.” After two weeks locked up in Yangon, some 70 new enlistees like Thura were handcuffed and driven north to the compound of University Training Camp No. 2 under the army’s Central Command in Mandalay. Their handlers locked them up again there, this time in a barracks, with two soldiers guarding them. They were only permitted to use the toilet within a strict five-minute interval. After a month in that camp, Thura said he was summoned to the Mandalay Palace compound, which houses the Central Military Command, where he underwent a medical examination, fingerprinting, and official registration along with the other coerced recruits. “They recorded our parents' names and our own, and forced us to give them our fingerprints. They also signed our names for us. There were even some of us who were underage and were inaccurately registered as non-minors,” said Thura. The medical examinations allegedly found that some of the recruits had HIV or hepatitis, but the higher-ranking soldiers forced them to undergo military training anyway, Thura recalled. Thura’s family attempted—unsuccessfully—to pay off the army to secure his release, he said. Some of his relatives even came to the camp in person to inquire about him, but were denied a meeting. An exercise at the No. 1 Military Recruitment Headquarters in Yangon (Myanmar Military Recruitment official website). “The soldiers falsely informed my family that I had willingly enlisted and refused to leave. Then they summoned me and gave me a beating,” he explained. After a month at Mandalay Palace, Thura was relocated to Basic Military Training School No. 3 in Yamethin Township in January 2023, alongside the other defrauded enlistees. Basic training lasted six months. Thura found himself in a unit of 160 new recruits, with a total of seven units of around the same size undergoing training. When it concluded, these recruits were dispatched to conflict zones throughout Myanmar. ‘Mandatory training’ and ‘government positions’ Ko Htet, who grew up in a rural area, also decided to go to Yangon, the country’s commercial capital, in search of employment. He also found one of the same job announcements that had entrapped Thura and decided to apply. “On the phone, they talked about learning opportunities in communication, driving, mechanics, technology, and computers. So I went to meet them the following day." He said that the rendezvous point for job applicants was a tea shop adjacent to the same bus stop—evidently the same one where Thura had gone for his interview. “They told us that when we came for the job interview, we should bring some clothes if possible, because we were supposed to start a training course in Naypyitaw or Pathein before going to work,” Ko Htet recalled. “They never disclosed that it was military training; they simply presented it as a necessary step for job placement. It was only after I was informed about the mandatory training that I realised it was a scam. I struggled hard to return home. They coerced people into recruitment,” he added. On Sunday, a Myanmar Now reporter called the number both young recruits had provided, posing as a young man in search of employment. During a call lasting close to five minutes, the person who answered said twice that the vacancies were for “government positions,” but never explicitly disclosed that it would entail enlisting in the military. The person who spoke with the reporter also said that the work contract would be in effect for five years and that it would be possible to arrange for national identification cards or household lists to be prepared for applicants who did not have them. On December 4, amid intensifying conflict with resistance forces, the army made an open call for deserters to rejoin the army, offering them amnesty due to the urgent need for manpower. The regime also granted a mass pardon to former soldiers ranking between private and sergeant serving time in prisons throughout the country, pushing them to reenlist in the army. The military council, facing a growing armed resistance movement across the country since seizing power in 2021, has recently had to abandon at least 15 towns and hundreds of bases to coalitions of established ethnic armed organisations and newly formed anti-regime guerrilla forces. In northern Shan State, the ethnic Kokang Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) has seized the towns of Mongko, Pang Hseng, Kunlong, Chin Shwe Haw, and Konkyan. MNDAA ally the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) has captured the northern Shan State towns of Namhsan and Namkham. In Sagaing Region, the People’s Defence Forces under the command of the publicly mandated National Unity Government and its allies have succeeded in taking the towns of Kawlin, Khampat, Shwe Pyi Aye and Maw Luu. Ethnic Chin armed groups have seized the towns of Rezua, Lailenpi, and Rikhawdar in Chin State, while Karenni resistance forces have taken control of Mese, as well as most of Loikaw, Demoso and Shardaw, all in Karenni State. Overstretched, the military has been unable to retake the lost territory and has been adjusting its tactics to counter the anti-junta fighters’ offensive operations. Throughout 2022, the military conducted frequent aerial bombings and often sent in shock troops on the ground to torch and terrorise villages suspected of harbouring resistance fighters and their supporters. Since the launch of a major coordinated offensive by the Brotherhood Alliance of ethnic armed groups in Shan State in late October of this year, the military has had to shift its focus to defending essential strongholds using long-range artillery and air strikes, and has practically stopped deploying ground troops in some combat areas.

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