Myanmar junta can order migrant workers home to fight, agency says

Read RFA coverage of this topic in Burmese.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Labor has issued a ruling allowing it to call back overseas workers for military service and has made the employment agencies that send workers abroad responsible for bringing them back if ordered to, an agency told Radio Free Asia on Friday.

Since the military ousted a democratically elected government in a 2021 coup, many thousands of Myanmar people have moved abroad to escape a crumbling economy, violent turmoil and, since early this year, the threat of being drafted into the military as it struggles against anti-junta forces.

While many try their luck and head abroad in the hope of finding work, many others find work through employment agencies, filling jobs overseas through deals Myanmar has struck with other governments.

The military’s ministry issued a regulation this week ordering job agencies to take full responsibility for their workers’ military service, and only to issue new contracts stipulating that workers and their foreign employers must agree that employees can be called back to serve, a member of staff at a Yangon-based employment agency told RFA.

“Agencies have been given responsibility for their conscription. After we take that duty, the junta has a lot of ways of calling them back. It’s a lot of pressure,” said the agency employee who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.

“If the workers we send are called back, then the trouble will start. If they don’t return, are we going to take action?” he said.

Under the regulation, workers would only be called back after two years, the agency source said, while expressing concern that the time rule could easily be ignored. RFA was not able to determine the reaction of foreign employers to the regulation.

RFA tried to call the junta’s labor minister, Nyan Win, to ask about the rule but he did not respond by the time of publication.

The junta enacted a conscription law in February, making men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 to serve for up to three years, after various insurgent forces battling to end military rule went on the offensive and made significant advances.

The law triggered an exodus of young people to places like Thailand. Myanmar authorities have detained and forcibly recruited people being sent back to Myanmar and turned to prisoners and even minors to fill gaps in the ranks, according to witnesses and residents of some communities.

Struggling with a crippled economy, the junta has already ordered that Myanmar workers in Laos and Thailand make payments from their salaries to bolster foreign reserves and employment agencies risk having their licenses revoked if those remittances are not collected.

Military authorities have also announced strict action against anyone caught trying to dodge the draft, state-run media reported on Nov. 7.

Nationwide, there are 21,000 conscripts at 23 training schools, the independent research group Burma Affairs and Conflict Study said in a report on Oct. 15.

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Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA staff.