Irrawaddy-Apr 8
It is an exodus for life. A choice between becoming a human shield or fleeing everything you have – your home, your family, your work and everything familiar to you – for a life of disorientation and confusion. This is how young people who recently fled the junta’s drive for mandatory military service describe their swift and desperate decisions. Ko Thakka had never considered leaving Myanmar until the junta activated a law requiring military service on Feb. 11 this year. He was running his own convenience store in Yangon where business was “brisk.” Then, an administrator told young men in his ward to sign up for conscription in the first week of March.
Ko Thakka, who is in the conscription age range, abandoned his convenience store and everything he knew to flee to Thailand. Conscription is “the way to death,” the 27-year-old says, adding for emphasis: It is a death sentence. The junta will use conscripts for human shields, he explains. “This is why I fled Myanmar.” The junta’s shock activation of the People’s Military Service Law immediately made all men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 eligible to be conscripted into two years of military service. The upper age limit rises to 45 for men and 35 for women if they have specialist expertise. For example, if they are engineers or medical professionals.
That’s 14 million people in Myanmar, or 26 percent of the country’s population of 54 million. After the initial shock of the law’s announcement, young people – and their relatives – began planning escape routes. Thousands of people have been lining up daily at the Thai Embassy in Yangon and the government passport office in Mandalay to try to get entry visas and travel documents. Read more at: https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/reluctant-exiles-another-life-or-death-exodus-from-myanmar.html
