A deadly stampede outside a passport office that took two lives and unending lines outside embassies – these are just some examples of what has been happening in Myanmar since the announcement of mandatory conscription into the military.
Myanmar’s military government is facing increasingly
effective opposition to its rule and has lost large areas of the country to armed resistance groups.
On 1 February 2021, the military seized power in a coup, jailing elected leaders and plunging much of the country into a bloody civil war that continues today.
Thousands have been killed and the UN estimates that around 2.6 million people been displaced.Young Burmese, many of whom have played a leading role protesting and resisting the junta, are now told they will have to fight for the regime.
Many believe that this is a result of the setbacks suffered by the military in recent months, with anti-government groups uniting to defeat them in some key areas.
“It is nonsense to have to serve in the military at this time, because we are not fighting foreign invaders. We are fighting each other. If we serve in the military, we will be contributing to their atrocities,” Robert, a 24-year-old activist, told the BBC.
Many of them are seeking to leave the country instead.
“I arrived at 03:30 [20:30 GMT] and there were already about 40 people queuing for the tokens to apply for their visa,” recalled a teenage girl who was part of a massive crowd outside the Thai embassy in Yangon earlier in February. Within an hour, the crowd in front of the embassy expanded to more than 300 people, she claims.
“I was scared that if I waited any longer, the embassy would suspend the processing of visas amid the chaos,” she told the BBC, adding that some people had to wait for three days before even getting a queue number.
In Mandalay, where the two deaths occurred outside the passport office, the BBC was told that there were also serious injuries – one person broke their leg after falling into a drain while another broke their teeth. Six others reported breathing difficulties.
Justine Chambers, a Myanmar researcher at the Danish Institute of International Studies, says mandatory conscription is a way of removing young civilians leading the revolution.
“We can analyse how the conscription law is a sign of the Myanmar military’s weakness, but it is ultimately aimed at destroying lives… Some will manage to escape, but many will become human shields against their compatriots,” she said.
Myanmar’s conscription law was first introduced in 2010 but had not been enforced until on 10 February the junta said it would mandate at least two years of military service for all men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27.
Maj-Gen Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for the military government, said in a statement that about a quarter of the country’s 56 million population were eligible for military service under the law.
The regime later said it did not plan to include women in the conscript pool “at present” but did not specify what that meant.
The government spokesperson told BBC Burmese that call-ups would start after the Thingyan festival marking the Burmese New Year in mid-April, with an initial batch of 5,000 recruits.
The regime’s announcement has dealt yet another blow to Myanmar’s young people.
Many had their education disrupted by the coup, which came on top of school closures at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2021, the junta suspended 145,000 teachers and university staff over their support for the opposition, according to the Myanmar Teachers’ Federation, and some schools in opposition-held areas have been destroyed by the fighting or by air strikes.
Then there are those who have fled across borders seeking refuge, among them young people looking for jobs to support their families.
In response to the conscription law, some have said on social media that they would enter the monkhood or get married early to dodge military service.
The junta says permanent exemptions will be given to members of religious orders, married women, people with disabilities, those assessed to be unfit for military service and “those who are exempted by the conscription board”. For everyone else, evading conscription is punishable by three to five years in prison and a fine.
But Mr Min doubts the regime will honour these exemptions. “The junta can arrest and abduct anyone they want. There is no rule of law and they do not have to be accountable to anyone,” he said.
Wealthier families are considering moving their families abroad – Thailand and Singapore being popular options, but some are even looking as far afield as Iceland – with the hope that their children would get permanent residency or citizenship there by the time they are of conscription age.