18 : Shan army challenges child rights group claim

 
The Shan State Army (SSA) South wishes to invite the Southeast Asia Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (SACSUCS) that had on 28 August charged the armed group with having a large number of child soldiers to prove its case, said the SSA Souths spokeswoman Khurhsen Heng-Awn on Friday (1 September).

Khurhsen Heng-Awn

Any (rights) group that would like to conduct investigations about child soldiers situation in the SSA is welcomed to our Loi Taileng headquarters (opposite Maehongsons Pang Mapha district), she told S.H.A.N.

The SSA, during a Peoples Seminar, 1 3 February 2001, had pledged to bow to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The resolution passed at the meeting stated that the draft age would thenceforth be 18-45 in place of 16-40 as practiced earlier.

The SACSUCS however said the SSA, unlike its allies the Karen National Union(KNU) and Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), had yet to open dialogue with rights groups and the UN agencies on the issue of right soldiers. It also has a high number of child soldier despite its claims to have stopped recruiting children, charged Banya, the SACSUCS Burma focus person.

SSA South meanwhile says all members under 18 are banned from joining regular units but instead sent to schools.

According to the rights groups, the number of child soldiers in Burma stands at 70,000, with at least 4,000 in armed rebel and ceasefire groups, in violation to the Conventions Article 38 with regards to child soldiers.

Burma is a signatory to the CRC..

UNICEF CRC Link: Convention on the Rights of the Child

UN meets KNPP, KNU on child soldiers

Use of child soldiers in battlefields came up for discussion between the United Nations office in Thailand and representatives of Karenni National Progressive Party and Karen National Union.

The UN Security Council released a report in 2005 stating that Burma´s ethnic armed groups including KNPP and KNU were using child soldiers. The meeting between the UN office in Thailand and KNPP and KNU was held recently on Thai-Burma border in the wake of the report.

At the meeting, UN officials said KNPP and KNU were using child soldiers in the areas they control.

However, the KNPP´s response was that it has no policy to forcibly recruit children under 18, nor adults into the army.

“Mostly, children come to us with resentment against Burmese troops,” said Rimond Htoo, a spokesperson of the KNPP. “They ask to be recruited but we don´t have a policy to recruit underage people so we don´t let them.”

Children who ask to be recruited are resentful of the Burmese Army because their parents, brothers, sisters or relatives were persecuted by Burmese troops. However, the KNPP sends these children to school, he said.

Some children who came to the Karenni Army are now studying in schools and some have already finished higher education and served as leaders in different social organizations, he said.

The KNPP is helping not only children in the organization to receive education but also those who fled Burma Army because of forced recruitment.

When the Burma Army, together with Karenni Nationalities People´s Liberation Front (KNPLF), attacked Nya Moe, KNPP´s base for three months, two youths, Maung Soe Thu (16) and Maung Myo Min (15), from Light Infantry Battalion 112 of Division 55 of Burma Army fled to Karenni liberated areas and are now attending a school.

According to a report released in 2002 by the Children Rights Watch, there are about 300,000 child soldiers in the world with about 70,000 in Burma.