[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 34 (Tuesday, March 4, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3082-S3083]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          THE BURMESE JUNTA'S PERSISTENT USE OF CHILD SOLDIERS

 Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I recently read an article 
that appeared in the Washington Post on February 10, 2003 by Ellen 
Nakashima that details particularly repulsive human rights abuses 
committed by the Burmese military junta, whose brutal totalitarian 
misrule has shattered the lives of its citizens and ruined Burma's 
economy. I am grateful for Ms. Nakashima's excellent reporting, and am 
pleased to draw attention to this important issue. I will ask that Ms. 
Nakashima's article, entitled ``Burma's Child Soldiers Tell of Army 
Atrocities,'' be printed in the Record following my remarks.
  Reports of widespread use of child soldiers, forced labor, and human 
rights abuse come as no surprise to anyone with even casual knowledge 
of recent Burmese history. Tragically, these recent reports are not 
``news,'' but rather business as usual in one of the world's most 
repressive countries.
  While the corrupt military junta has recently been conducting a 
propagandistic offensive to convince naive Western diplomats that Burma 
can be a responsible member of the international community, the 
continual flow of evidence regarding Burma's gross abuses of human 
rights illustrates how hollow recent Burmese ``reform'' has been. 
Anyone duped into believing that the junta's decision to loosen the 
shackles that bind Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader 
of Burma who has spent nearly a decade under house arrest, represents a 
liberalization of the junta should think again. Proof that the Burmese 
junta continues its repression of democracy came yesterday when the 
Defense Ministry announced that it had detained seven members of Aung 
San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy Party, NLDP, members. Their 
treasonous crime appears to be distributing anti-government leaflets.
  The Burmese junta maintains power through its gratuitous use of 
military force against ethnic minorities and political dissidents. Now, 
the evidence is overwhelming that the junta exploits children as young 
as 11 years old in pursuit of greater coercive military power. Human 
Rights Watch reports that Burma's army of 350,000 includes nearly 
70,000 boys under the age of 18.
  If these children are fortunate enough to survive the physical and 
emotional abuse heaped on them by their military superiors during their 
``training,'' they are then forced into combat, often against domestic 
Karenni and Shan minorities. As part of the ethnic cleansing and 
intimidation campaigns the Burmese junta has conducted against these 
ethnic minorities for decades, these children soldiers are often 
encouraged to torture, rape, and kill innocent villagers. In one 
instance, Burmese military commanders ordered some of these child 
soldiers to force Karenni villagers to clear a minefield by walking 
through it. The children were subsequently ordered to shoot villagers 
who refused to walk through the minefield.
  Recently, the Burmese junta has sought to improve its standing in the 
international community by touting its supposedly more intense efforts 
to curb the production and trafficking of heroin. Mr. President, this 
claim is laughable. American State Department officials should not be 
deluded into believing that Burma has become a partner in the war 
against drugs. Burmese child defectors from the army who now live in 
refugee camps in Thailand have corroborated reports that the Burmese 
military has fueled its soldiers by making them take amphetamines, 
washed down with whiskey, before going into combat. Countries that 
force drugged children into deadly combat should not be considered 
allies by the United States in any war.
  In response to Human Rights Watch's report, a Burmese military 
spokesman denied that Burma ``recruits'' underage soldiers and 
incredulously asserted that Burma's military is an all-volunteer army. 
Such brazen lies should convince no one that the Burmese government has 
changed its repressive ways.
  If Than Swe, as head of the Burmese government, is committed to 
upholding international standards of human rights, it can begin by 
enacting meaningful and verifiable economic, political, and judicial 
reforms. It should release the seven NLDP members it has unjustly 
arrested and all other political prisoners, and it should allow Aung 
San Suu Kyi to meet and communicate freely with Burmese citizens 
throughout the country, as well as with international representatives. 
Until the Burmese junta agrees to hold free and fair elections to allow 
the Burmese people the opportunity to choose their own leaders, it must 
be aware that American sanctions will continue.
  I ask that the article to which I referred be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Feb. 10, 2003]

             Burma's Child Soldiers Tell of Army Atrocities

                          (By Ellen Nakashima)

       He was taught how to hold an assault rifle and aim it at an 
     enemy. He was taught how to pull a trigger, aim at the next 
     enemy and pull the trigger again. He learned all this, he 
     says, by the time he was 12, when he was officially declared 
     a soldier of Burma and sent to the front lines of a long-
     running civil war.
       Now 14, the taciturn boy Kyaw Zay Ya lives in a rebel-held 
     village in Burma near the Thai border, one of the few places 
     in the country willing to protect him from service in what 
     human rights monitors call the largest child army in the 
     world.
       According to New York-based Human Rights Watch, Burman's 
     army of 350,000 includes as many as 70,000 youths under 18. A 
     study the group issued last October found that rebel groups 
     fighting the army also use child soldiers, though in far 
     smaller numbers.
       The numbers would make the military-ruled Burma, also known 
     as Myanmar, the worst violator of international laws against 
     using children in armed conflicts, Human Rights Watch 
     contends.
       The Burmese government has denied that its army takes in 
     recruits under 18, and says that its force is all volunteer. 
     But people interviewed in safe houses and camps along the 
     border disputed those contentions.
       In a two-hour talk here, Kyaw said he was press-ganged into 
     the army at age 11, took part in combat repeatedly and felt 
     ``afraid and very far from home.''
       Another young man, Naing Win, said he was 16 when he was 
     ordered into a nasty firefight. To fuel the soldiers, he 
     said, the commander made them take amphetamines, washed down 
     with whiskey. The troops, Naing recalled, ``got very happy.''
       In the encounter, each soldier was ordered to lob five 
     grenades at the enemy. Naing, whose forehead bears a shrapnel 
     scar, said he was sufficiently high on the drugs that at one 
     point he was throwing stones. With one grenade, he forgot to 
     remove the pin that allows it to explode. then he was ordered 
     to run forward exposed to enemy fire, retrieve the grenade, 
     take out the pin and throw it again. The battle killed his 
     best friend, 15.
       Another time, after his unit had won a battle against 
     ethnic Karenni rebels, his commander wanted the area cleared 
     of mines. But 40 Karenni villagers were made to walk through 
     the mined zone, he said. In the ensuing explosions, some died 
     and some lost their legs. Those who survived were lined up. 
     Naing said he and several other soldiers were ordered to 
     shoot them. They did.

[[Page S3083]]

       ``I'm very sorry,'' he said.
       For much of Burma's history since it gained independence in 
     1948, the national army has been fighting guerrilla armies 
     fielded by ethnic groups that want control of their own 
     affairs and regions. Currently, army operations consist 
     largely of low-intensity conflicts against a handful of 
     opposition groups, notably the Shan State Army, the Karen 
     National Liberation Army and the Karenni Army.
       The army has a major advantage in numbers over these 
     groups, none of which has more than 15,000 troops, according 
     to Karen and Karenni officials and Human Rights Watch, but 
     they say the army still employs underage soldiers.
       ``Children are picked up off the street when they are 11 
     years old,'' said Jo Becker, child advocacy director for 
     Human Rights Watch. ``Many have no chance to contact their 
     families and see their parents again. Everyone we had talked 
     to had been beaten during the training. Most were desperately 
     unhappy.''
       The Burmese government denies the charges. ``I am totally 
     flabbergasted at the assertions in the Human Rights Watch 
     report,'' said Col. Hla Min, deputy head of the Defense 
     Ministry's International Affairs Department in the capital, 
     Rangoon. ``The Myanmar Defense Forces does not recruit 
     underage and, in fact, MDF is a voluntary army. Today, after 
     98 percent of all the insurgents have made peace with the 
     government, there is not much need for recruitment as accused 
     by certain quarters.''
       In a faxed reply to a query, he stated that the Burmese 
     troops are now engaged in work similar to that of the U.S. 
     Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.
       U Kyaw Tint Swe, Burma's ambassador to the United Nations, 
     said in a statement to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 14 
     that ``there is no credible evidence of the use and 
     recruitment of children by the Myanmar armed forces.''
       U.S. policy is that people can enlist in the military at 
     age 17, but must be at least 18 to serve on front lines.
       In an interview, a 19-year-old named Aung, who asked that 
     his full name not be used, said he was taken into the army in 
     1998 at age 14 after seven years in an army-run prep camp, 
     named Ye Nyunt. There he and others learned to march in 
     straight rows, clean guns and recognize land mines. Aung was 
     9 when he first picked up a gun, a standard army-issue G-3. 
     The gun was taller than he was, he recalled.
       Aung though that after he finished his studies, he would 
     become an army captain. But one June day in 1998, when he was 
     14, a general showed up at the school. All boys older than 13 
     who had not finished the 10th grade were pulled aside. He and 
     his schoolmates thought they were just being sent to another 
     class. Instead, they were trucked to a holding center in 
     Mandalay. ``I got to the army by force,'' he said, ``not 
     voluntarily.''
       Aung said he first saw battle at the age of 15, and he was 
     sick for three days afterward. But he grew used to it: In the 
     following two years, he took part in seven major firefights 
     and countless minor skirmishes, he said.
       The worse battle lasted from early morning into the 
     evening, in the village of Loi Lin Lay in 1999. The fighting 
     began at the back of the village and by afternoon had moved 
     to the front, where he and his friend, another 15-year-old, 
     were deployed. By nightfall, most of his Burmese counterparts 
     were dead.
       ``During the fighting, you don't have time to think,'' he 
     says. ``Only shoot.''
       He said he felt powerless to resist. In the army, ``if a 
     bad person gives an order, you have to follow it. If he says 
     burn the village, you have to burn it. If he says kill a 
     person, you have to do it.''
       Naing Win, the boy soldier who recounted use of 
     amphetamines, said in an interview that he was picked up at a 
     train station near Mandalay when he was 15. Authorities found 
     he had no identification card and gave him a choice: Join the 
     army or go to prison. He was forced into a truck with 40 
     other people, 16 of whom were boys. They were taken to an 
     army base, then to a holding camp for recruits.
       If a boy refused to east his food, was late or missed a 
     task, the other soldiers would often be forced to beat the 
     victim with bamboo strips or a whip, Naing said. There were 
     other forms of punishment, the former soldiers said, such as 
     jumping in the sand like frogs for 10 minutes, or lying flat 
     on the ground and staring at the sun.
       One boy was stripped naked, his hands and legs tied, Naing 
     recalled. After 20 or 30 blows, his skin was bloody. An 
     officer rubbed salt into the wounds on his back. The boy 
     screamed in pain. Hours later, he was dead.
       But not all officers were harsh, said Kyaw, who recounted 
     being plucked for military service from a bus stop near 
     Rangoon at age 11. One officer let the boys watch videos, 
     including James Bond movies. Others would arrange 
     surreptitious meetings between a youngster and his parents.
       In the field, they had duties that included rounding up 
     villagers in rebel areas to serve as porters, the former 
     soldiers said. Those who balked or could not keep up were 
     beaten or killed. Naing said he also witnessed Karenni 
     villagers being raped. A general told the soldiers that 
     raping women serves ``to give the soldiers energy.''
       ``Some of my friends said, `It's okay. They're not Burmese. 
     They're Karenni.'' Once, he said, he saw a teenage girl being 
     raped repeatedly in an open field in the evening. First came 
     the battalion leader, then a bodyguard, then ordinary 
     soldiers. She was screaming and crying. She was left to die, 
     he said.
       All three of the former soldiers said they eventually 
     deserted.
       Naing fled in 1995, after six years in the army. He married 
     a Karenni woman and joined the Burma Patriotic Army, a group 
     of 30 fellow deserters whose aim is to oppose the central 
     government in Rangoon. He said he has pretty much abandoned 
     hope of seeing his family in Mandalay province again, unless 
     there is a change in government. He still dreams about his 
     friend who was killed.
       Aung escaped in May 2001. Today, he lives in a Thai town 
     near the border and works odd jobs. He is waiting for the 
     political situation to change, so that he can return home to 
     Rangoon province. The only way he expects that to be possible 
     is if ``people in the outside world put a lot of pressure on 
     the government.''
       And last September, after three years in uniform, Kyaw was 
     bathing alone in a stream near a waterfall. No one was 
     watching. He bolted. After walking for four hours, he reached 
     a Karen village, where soldiers tied his hands an punched 
     him, thinking he might be a spy. After he convinced a Karen 
     officer that he was a true deserter, he was given refuge in a 
     border village.
       He does not dare to go home. ``They will put me in 
     prison,'' he said. He has no desire to resume studying. His 
     only desire is to be a kickboxer one day, like his favorite 
     Burmese boxers Shwe da Win and Wan Chai. He says he does not 
     think much about the army. He has no nightmares. ``I don't 
     dream,'' he said.

                          ____________________