Myanmar junta blacklists hundreds of doctors for declining to work for them

Military authorities are withholding degree certificates from around 800 doctors who started medical residencies before Myanmar’s 2021 coup, effectively denying them the possibility of employment, two impacted doctors said. The blacklisting appears to be retaliation for the doctors’ decision not to return to take government jobs in the wake of the military coup following their residencies. In addition to withholding their degrees, the regime has also barred them from practising or travelling abroad. Medical schools in Yangon, Mandalay, and Magway have scheduled graduation ceremonies for this year that were previously put on hold after the military coup. As reported in regime-controlled newspapers, the ceremonies will award Ph.D and MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) degrees for the preceding three years simultaneously. However, only a minority of the class that started their final year in 2018 will be allowed to graduate, according to two doctors who were denied their degree certificates and spoke to Myanmar Now on condition of anonymity. Of 1,022 medical students in this class and passed their final MBBS exams, most will be denied degrees. Only some 200 members of this class who are currently working in medicine for the junta will receive certificates, the affected doctors said. The doctors who spoke with Myanmar Now finished their medical coursework in December 2019 and have completed more than a full year of training in medical residencies. When they enrolled in medical school, they signed an agreement to serve as government employees for three years after graduation if required, with a fine of up to 1m kyat (around US $650 at the time) imposed for failure to fulfil that commitment.The military council directed members of this class to apply for government service positions in 2022, a year after the coup, but most of the doctors participating in the CDM sought ways to pay the penalty rather than serve amid the ongoing political turmoil, one of the affected doctors said.“We didn’t apply for work because we all agreed that we couldn’t serve in these conditions,” one doctor told Myanmar Now. “Now, they’re withholding our degrees because we didn’t serve. But this goes against the terms of the agreement we signed. They’re supposed to take the million-kyat fine, but the Ministry of Health is refusing to accept it.”“Now that the graduation ceremony is taking place, we still won’t receive our degrees,” he added. “We were supposed to get our medical licences after completing university, but they haven’t been issued yet.”Regime authorities have also barred doctors from this class who refused government work from applying for passports or travelling abroad. One of the doctors said immigration officers, joined by officials from special investigations and other junta departments, once stopped him from boarding a flight departing from Yangon Airport, subjected him to an inspection, and ordered him to turn back. Following the 2021 coup, many medical students and professionals joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), a campaign of nonviolent strikes by government employees to protest military rule. Junta chief Sen-Gen Min Aung Hlaing has said that nearly 55,000 employees stayed on in their positions at the Ministry of Health, while more than 47,000 joined the movement, although he admitted that only 65 percent of the country’s hospitals and clinics were operating during the COVID-19 pandemic. The military regime responded by cracking down on healthcare workers, directing private hospitals not to hire CDM participants or medical professionals whose licences authorities had allowed to expire. According to one of the doctors who spoke to Myanmar Now, doctors who earned their degrees just before the coup and opted out of serving under the military regime have become junta targets, facing restrictions that deprive them of any opportunity to practise in Myanmar or continue their education elsewhere. “We can’t go abroad, and we’re losing many opportunities here as well. Our future feels very uncertain,” he said.Another doctor said major private hospitals refused to hire them without licenses, and opportunities for work in other fields without degrees were scarce. Despite these challenges, many doctors still have no desire to work for the regime. “Working under the military council is not the solution,” he said. “Most of us don’t want to work in such conditions. It’s difficult to enter this failing system and be part of it.”“We are entitled to our rights,” he continued. “If some choose not to claim theirs, that’s their personal choice, but the responsibility to provide us with what we earned falls on them. We graduated in 2020, not under their system, so they are obligated to give us what we’ve worked for.”The doctors have submitted requests not only for their degree certificates, but for their medical licenses, transcripts, and grade point averages. They have also appealed to be removed from the blacklist, argued that they have abided by the terms of the agreement they signed, and offered to pay the standard penalty for non-fulfilment of the government work requirement, all to no avail. Myanmar Now requested comment from Dr. Than Naing Soe, the spokesperson for Myanmar’s junta-controlled health ministry, but did not receive a response.The publicly mandated National Unity Government (NUG) has expressed public support for CDM doctors’ plight but may have misjudged the scope of the problem. A March 6 Facebook post by Dr. Khin Maung Lwin, an advisor to the NUG’s health ministry and chair of the Federal Health Professional Council (FHPC), claimed many doctors who had opted out of working for the regime had received their degrees or licences and were working or continuing their medical educations abroad. In response, some doctors pointed out that many within the country are still struggling to obtain certificates.The junta placed two female students from Myanmar on a blacklist in November of last year after finding they had tried to matriculate at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand using NUG-issued medical degrees. Calling the certificates counterfeit, authorities also claimed to have detained and imprisoned the notaries who helped prepare them.

Myanmar junta blacklists hundreds of doctors for declining to work for them

On the pretext of failure to fulfil their work obligations, the military regime has denied credentials to some 800 young medical professionals and blocked them from practising in Myanmar or abroad

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