Thousands seek to quit Myanmar after military service announcement

People stand in line to get visas at the Thai embassy in Yangon after Myanmar’s military government said it would impose military service

More than 1,000 people lined up at the Thai embassy in Yangon on Friday as young people sought to leave Myanmar after the junta said it would impose military service.

The military said last weekend it would enforce a law allowing it to call up all men aged 18-35 and women aged 18-27 to serve for at least two years, as it struggles to quell opposition to its 2021 coup.

The junta faces widespread armed opposition to its rule three years after seizing power from an elected civilian government and recently suffered a series of stunning losses to an armed alliance of ethnic minority groups.

The Thai embassy in Yangon has been swamped with young men and women seeking visas to get out of Myanmar since the announcement last Saturday that the “People’s Military Service Law” would be brought into force.

On Friday, an AFP journalist saw a queue of between 1,000 and 2,000 people snaking through the streets near the mission in downtown Yangon — compared with less than 100 before Saturday’s announcement.

The embassy said it is issuing 400 numbered tickets a day in order to manage the queue.

Student Aung Phyo, 20, said he arrived at the embassy at 8 pm on Thursday and slept in his car before starting to queue around midnight.

“We had to wait for three hours and police opened the security gate around 3 am and we had to run to the front of the embassy to try to get places for a token,” he told AFP, using a pseudonym because of fears for his safety.

“After we got a token, people who didn’t get one were still queuing in front of the embassy hoping they might give out extras.”

The law was authored by a previous junta in 2010 but never used and it is not clear how it will now be enforced.

No details have been given about how those called up would be expected to serve but many young people are not keen to wait and find out.

“I will go to Bangkok with a tourist visa and hope to stay there for a while,” Aung Phyo said.

“I haven’t decided yet to work or study. I just wanted to escape from this country.”

The junta has said it is taking measures to arm pro-military militias as it battles opponents across the country — both anti-coup “People’s Defence Forces” and more long-standing armed groups belonging to ethnic minorities.

Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said on Saturday the military service system was needed “because of the situation happening in our country”.

More than 4,500 people have been killed in the military’s crackdown on dissent since its February 2021 coup and over 26,000 arrested, according to a local monitoring group.

bur-pdw/pbt