New law sparks fear as potential conscripts try to flee

Across Myanmar, the young and middle-aged, both men and women, are desperately searching for ways to flee their homes, after it was announced the military junta will impose a mandatory conscription law from mid-April.

- Rebecca Ratcliffe, Aung Naing Soe

The law, which would force people to serve a military many despise, has sent a wave of terror across the country.

Passport offices and embassies in Myanmar have been flooded with applications, with a queue of more than a thousand people on a single day trying to secure a visa for neighbouring Thailand. Helplines offering advice on ways to leave the country - how to manage checkpoints, what documents are needed - have been inundated.

"If I joined the military, I would have to fight my own people. I do not want to do that," said Thura, who spoke under a pseudonym, from Shan State. "The military is infamous - they are killing people, arresting people, doing so many unjust things." His wife, he added, had urged him to leave her and their eight-year-old daughter behind.

UN special rapporteur for Myanmar Tom Andrews warned last month the number of people fleeing across borders to escape conscription "will surely skyrocket".

In Thura's area, streets are now empty by early evening. "It's very unusual to see any people, any young people, on the road," he said. "The shops and cafes are all closed by 6pm." Even before the conscription was announced, there were reports of people being snatched on the streets and forcibly recruited. Activists fear conscripts will be used as porters to carry supplies on the frontline. In the past, the military has used porters as human shields, sending them out in front to trip landmines and shield soldiers from gunfire.