KIA frees underage prisoners of war

Ethnic minority rebels have freed eight underage military recruits captured and held as prisoners of war, the International Labour Organisation said yesterday, while another human-rights group reported that child soldiers were still being used in the country.

The ILO said it had acted as an intermediary between the government and the rebels in the recent release of the soldiers in the northern state of Kachin.

“This led to the release of eight underage recruits by the Kachin Independence Army [KIA] who were held … as prisoners of war,” said the ILO’s Yangon liaison officer, Steve Marshall.

He said the organisation was seeking their formal discharge from the military. It was unclear how long they had been held as prisoners of war.

There are believed to be thousands of under-18s in Myanmar’s state army and those of ethnic armed groups following decades of military rule marked by a number of insurgencies in remote border areas.

Fighting has intensified between the military and the KIA since a 17-year ceasefire broke down in June 2011. In June last year, Myanmar’s new reformist government signed an agreement with the UN pledging to prevent the use of child soldiers and allow access to military units to check for underage recruits.

Forty-two child soldiers have since been discharged from the government forces, according to the ILO and state media.

“Even if the process may be slowing down, and not so many are being recruited, there are still children slipping through the recruitment procedure,” Marshall said.

He said the KIA was also suspected of recruiting child soldiers on occasion but had cooperated in returning minors to their families.

Child Soldiers International reports levels of child recruitment have declined, but the outlawed practice continues, due to a lack of political will to implement safeguards. 

Myanmar is one of about two dozen countries worldwide found by the UN to violate international law on the rights of children in armed conflicts. Ending the use of child soldiers has been among the litany of reforms sought by the US and other Western nations that have restored diplomatic ties as Myanmar has begun to shift from five decades of oppressive military rule. The London-based rights group says authorities have failed so far to monitor army recruitment systematically, and recruitment patterns appear unchanged from the past decade. 

“Military officers and informal recruiting agents continue to use intimidation, coercion, and physical violence to obtain new recruits, including under-18s,” says the report, which is based on three research missions in Myanmar and along its border with Thailand, the latest in December. 

The report says children are also in the ranks of army-controlled border guard forces and ethnic armed opposition groups that for the most part have reached ceasefires with the government after decades of fighting for more autonomy. It criticises the government for refusing the UN and child-protection agencies access to the ethnic groups to help end child recruitment. 

The army, which is still waging a major offensive against ethnic Kachin rebels in the north of the country, has a constant demand for new recruits because of high desertion rates, the report says. 

Children are targeted as they are easier to trick and more susceptible to pressure to enlist, it says. They are being recruited on their way into schools and when they leave home in search of work, or in railway stations, bus terminals and markets. A common tactic is to threaten children with prison for failing to produce a national identity card unless they sign up for the army. 

The group said it received testimony from three child soldiers in May 2012 who had been forcibly recruited and deployed on the front line of fighting against the Kachin. One 16-year-old said he was made to fight but was very scared and just fired his gun in the air. He was later caught by the rebels. It also cites a case of a 13-year-old recruited into an ethnic Karen border-guard force.