Commentary: Conscription is pushing many in Myanmar to choose sides

NOT NEW Recruitment REQUIRED

Conscription-related weight is not fresh. The SAC director claimed that Myanmar was certainly unique and that the current course of action “allies foreign conventions,” claiming that 18 nations engaged in recruitment. The main function of conscription is to protect a nation against external threats, not to prosecute inside legal issues against one’s fellow citizens, is a glaring mistake.

He added that there was law for the 2010 Military Service Law. The laws and its current application date back to the 1959 Military Service Law promulgated by the caregiver government under then-commander public Ne Win, to which Burma’s next civil authorities ceded power lawfully from 1958 to 1960.

There are historical examples of the regulators enlisting citizens in secondary positions in the defense. This is the main cause of the worry that the 2010 Military Service Law has received.

For instance, the 1907 Village Tract Act, enacted when Burma was a British settlement, empowered the government to demand local services, such as for attendants, in law enforcement actions. This was essentially no recruitment, but the defense used the Act to press- group civilians as porters for counter- insurgency operations.

The exercise continued after Burma’s democracy in 1948. In military installations, there are documented cases of porters working as laborers or human shields. Although a 1999 order to end “exercising powers” under the 1907 Act was issued by military authorities, it was only repealed in 2012 and replaced with new regulations that sought to address global force to end forced labor and conscription practices.

Introduced before the government’s switch to a quasi- human supervision, the 2010 rules improved upon the 1959 edition by clarifying and simplifying eligibility criteria and terms of service. But, the military has some discretion in the form of some obscure clauses, including whether or not Muslim clergy are exempt from spiritual orders.