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Myanmar children bought and sold by army recruiters: report
AFP: 31 October 2007
NEW YORK: Children as young as 10 are being forcibly recruited into the Myanmar army, bought and sold by military recruiters desperate to swell their ranks, Human Rights Watch said in a report Wednesday.

The military, plagued by high desertion rates and a lack of volunteers, is enabling the practice with military recruiters and civilians getting cash and other incentives for each new recruit, the rights group said.

"The government's senior generals tolerate the blatant recruitment of children and fail to punish perpetrators," said Jo Becker, a child's rights advocate for Human Rights Watch.

"In this environment, army recruiters traffic children at will."

Recruiters, desperate to meet quotas set by their superiors, target children at train and bus stations, markets and other public places and threaten them if they refuse to join.

Some children are beaten until they agree, said the report entitled "Sold to be Soldiers: The Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers in Burma."

"Burma" is the former name of the country, which was changed to "Myanmar" by the military government in 1989. Some western countries like the UK and US, and groups who are against the Myanmar government still refer to the country as "Burma".

The rights group said thousands of children are among the army's ranks and in some newly-formed battalians, children reportedly represent a large percentage of privates.

"They filled the forms and asked my age, and when I said 16, I was slapped and he said, 'You are 18. Answer 18,'" Maung Zaw Oo told Human Rights Watch, recounting the second time he was forced into service.

Another former child soldier, Than Myint Oo, said, "The officers are corrupt and the battalions have to get recruits, so there's a business.

"The battalions bribe the recruiting officers to get recruits for them. These are mostly underage recruits, but the recruiting officers fill out the forms for them and say they're 18."

One boy said he was forced into the army at age 11, despite being only 1.3 meters tall and weighing less than 31 kilograms.

The country's recent bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters led by Buddhist monks sparked international outrage, with the US tightening sanctions on the ruling military government.

And the sweep against monks and other protesters may make children more vulnerable to recruitment as the army could "find it even harder to find willing volunteers," Human Rights Watch said.

Although the UN Security Council has threatened sanctions against those linked to the use of child soldiers, it has so far taken no action, it said.

The report calls for the Security Council to consider possible bans on the supply of arms and military assistance and travel restrictions on government leaders.

"The Security Council should fulfill its pledge to hold violators to account for recruiting and using child soldiers," Becker said.

"Given Myanmar's abysmal record on child soldiers, sanctions against the military government are clearly warranted," said Becker.

Apart from the military, most of the country's 30 or more non-state armed groups reportedly also use child soldiers but in smaller numbers, the report said.

The government has created a committee that it says works to prevent the recruitment of children but Becker said the committee is a "sham" and spends most of its time denouncing reports of child soldiers.