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Summary: Ethnic Shan guerrillas in Myanmar do not use child soldiers, a top rebel leader said, denying allegations by the ruling junta that he pressed boys as young as 13 into military service.
[DOI TAILANG, Myanmar, 31 January 2006] - Ethnic Shan guerrillas in Myanmar do not use child soldiers, a top rebel leader said, denying allegations by the ruling junta that he pressed boys as young as 13 into military service. "All our soldiers are aged 18 to 50," Shan State Army (SSA) supremo Colonel Yod Suk told Reuters in his hilltop jungle hideout along the Myanmar-Thai border. Behind him, two young men clad in black military fatigues stood stiffly to attention, their AK-47 rifles pointing to the sky. "There are no soldiers under 18," the 48-year-old guerrilla chief - whose name translates as 'Warlord' -- said on the eve of a ceremony marking 10 years since the SSA's split with the opium-fuelled Mong Tai Army of Golden Triangle drug lord Khun Sa. The former Burma's military junta said this month that a group of captured guerrillas had included several teenage SSA soldiers, including one, a private called Soe Naing, who was only 13. The Burmese army, which has frequently been accused of using child soldiers itself, paraded Soe Naing and his colleagues in front of diplomats and Yangon-based reporters two weeks ago. However, Yod Suk said the news conference was a ploy to discredit his guerrilla force, which he says numbers 10,000 men. It is one of the largest militias fighting the junta, which has held power under various guises since 1962. "This is not a Shan person. It is clearly a Burmese boy," he said, waving a photo of Soe Naing printed out from the Internet. "They are trying to fabricate, but not doing a good enough job to get people to believe them." The junta also accused Yod Suk of using threats and force to recruit new fighters - a charge he denied. "It is not practical to force people to join us. All members of the SSA are Shan people and they were not forced to join," he said. One of Yod Suk's top advisers, Tern Sang, said SSA patrols often gave military fatigues to refugees they came across in the jungle - a possible explanation for the child soldier accusations made against the militia, he said. "They take the uniforms off the moment they get into the camp. Maybe this is the reason for some of the misunderstanding," Tern Sang said. In 2002, Human Rights Watch accused the junta of recruiting an estimated 70,000 child soldiers, many of whom were forced to commit atrocities against ethnic minority civilians, the New York-based group said. According to a UN report last year, 42 armed groups in 11 nations were guilty of recruiting or using children in war. The countries named were Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Colombia.