(Based on the Burmese post from the FACE BOOK in August 2025.)
A destitute family of three in the hellhole called
war-ravaged Myanmar. Old mother made and sold Burmese snacks under the big
kokeko tree next to their tiny hut on the tiny piece of land they owned. The old
father formerly was a carpenter but had a severe stroke and paralysed and ended
up permanently in bed.
They have one young son who worked as a bricklayer and
being a good boy, he gave his daily wages to his old parents. Even though they
were poor they had a reasonable life together. Then one day the tragedy struck.
On his way back home from work that day the boy was
forcefully grabbed by the drafters from Mynamar Army and Myanmar Police, the
hellish brutes, universally hated by their own people of Myanmar. They put him
in jail and then went to his old parents and tried to haggle for his release.
Give us 10,000,000 Myanmar kyats (about US$ 2,500) if they want their son back, demanded they. Othewise he would be sent to a boot camp for two months and then be fighting the ethnic insurgents at the faraway front lines by the Chinese border.
The old couple had no choice but to pay them to get
their boy back. But they had no cash that large. They had to sell their tiny land
and the tiny hut standing on that land. Two senior drafting officers, one army major
and one police inspector, came and collected the cash. But they didn’t keep
their promise.
The boy was sent to the army and four months later he was killed with so many other fresh recruits in Kayah State by the KNDF rebels. The tragedy didn’t end there. Homeless and cashless, the paralyzed old father died on the streets and the sick old mother ended up begging inside a famous Buddhist pagoda in the City.
Ruthless Drafters in Hellish Myanmar
Since the coup in 2010 Myanmar Army has been losing
countless men and substatntial territories to the rebellion and to rebuild the
army thusands and thousands of young men and older boys are forcefully drafted
into the army. Already sixteen batches of 5,000 each wre completed and now the 17th
batch is beginning to start soon, but they are facing severe difficulties to
get more draftees.
So the Compulsory Drafts are horribly enforced and
any young man and sometimes older boys looked old enough have been grabbed on
the streets and at thousands of check points and at security gates all over the
country of Myanmar formerly known as Burma.
They even raided the private homes and forcebily
arrested young men and boys for avoiding the draft and ransomed them for large
amount of cash. The drafting officers together with the local authorites are
making and accumulating considerable wealth from those ransoms from the possible
draftees’ families and also from selling the captured draftees to the Myanmar
Army Training battalions. The rumors are that Myanmar Army pays them one
thousand US$ for each draftee collected.
For example, in the mid-sized town of Chauk City in
Middle Burma, the Township Army Administrator Colonel Tin Htun Oo admitted that
he is not filling his township quota for the coming 17th Army Training
Batch. And he is ordering his men to arrest all the youngsters even in their homes.
He has already ordered the Paramilitary, Army. and Police
in Chauk Town to arrest any youth on Chauk town day and night as they have not yet
filled their draftee quota. His men have been driving around in private cars
and grabbing any young men and older boys for the military service. They are even
entering the Buddhist monasteries and derobing young monks for military
service.
They also are daily raiding the wet markets and grocery
stores, and the young workers there in Chauk Town do not even dare to go to
work for a living. The shops and markets are now deserted, and the local
economy is collapsing rapidly.
