DRAFTED TO DESTROY THEIR OWN: How Burma’s Generals Force Citizens to Become Instruments of Atrocity
When a nation is attacked from the outside, military conscription is controversial but comprehensible.
When a regime forces its own people to fight, kill, and terrorize their fellow citizens — the same communities the regime is already brutalizing — that is not defense; it is state-engineered betrayal.
This is the strategy of the Burmese military junta.
Legal Cover for Forced Complicity
Article 21A of Burma’s People’s Military Service Law (2010) — enforced beginning February 10, 2024 — permits the junta to mobilize civilians when a “state of emergency” is declared. The junta itself created that state of emergency through an illegal coup.
Under this law:
Men 18–35 and women 18–27 are subject to forced military service
Refusal can result in imprisonment equal to the full term of service
Orders apply even in areas where the military itself is the aggressor
The United Nations stated in March 2024 that enforcing conscription during active repression may constitute “forced labor and coercion contrary to international law” (UN Human Rights Office, March 18, 2024 press briefing).
A Regime Already Documented for Crimes Against Humanity
The Burmese military is not a neutral state institution — it is widely recognized as one of the most violent, corrupt, and abusive armed forces in the world.
Documented atrocities include:
Mass killings of civilians (Amnesty International, “Myanmar: Massacres of Civilians,” Oct 2022)
Systematic rape and sexual torture of women (Human Rights Watch, “Sexual Violence by Myanmar Military,” 2021)
Intentional burning of villages (UN OHCHR, “Flash Report on Myanmar Military Operations,” 2017; repeated 2021–2024)
Executions without trial (Amnesty International, “Myanmar executes four activists,” July 2022)
Airstrikes on IDP camps, churches, schools, and hospitals (UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Quarterly Brief, Dec 2023)
Ethnic cleansing against ethnic minorities (UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission, 2018 — concluded with “genocidal intent”)
To conscript civilians into such a force is not national service —
it is forced enlistment into an internationally-documented criminal enterprise.
Conscription as a Weapon — Not a Policy
Research on authoritarian military conscription shows that dictators do not mobilize citizens to defend borders — they mobilize them to fragment society and suppress resistance.
In Burma, conscription:
Removes fighting-age men from anti-junta strongholds (International Crisis Group, “Myanmar’s Military Manpower Crisis,” Feb 2024)
Forces citizens to kill other civilians or ethnic minorities under duress
Creates fear, mass displacement, and refugee outflows into Thailand and India
Destroys unity between Burman civilians and ethnic nationalities
Human Rights Watch wrote in Feb 2024:
“The conscription order is not about defending the state — it is about binding the population into the junta’s war against its own people.”
(HRW, “Myanmar: Scrap Abusive Conscription Law,” Feb 2024)
Turning Victims into Perpetrators
People who have been bombed, displaced, or widowed by the army are now ordered to join the very command structure that destroyed them.
This serves two regime goals:
Create moral contamination — if victims commit atrocities, resistance unity fractures
Manufacture fear — every household becomes vulnerable to state extraction of sons and daughters
The junta is not merely fighting a war —
it is forcing the population to commit it.
Conclusion: Conscription as a Crime, Not a Policy
Burma is not defending itself from an invader.
It is a military junta conscripting its own civilians to enforce its rule by terror against those same civilians.
International law recognizes forced participation in atrocities as a human rights violation. When the draftee is compelled to attack his own community under duress, the crime becomes two-layered: by the generals, and through the conscripted hand they control.
This is not conscription.
It is coerced complicity in crimes against humanity.
Sources
Amnesty International. Myanmar: Massacres of Civilians Documented. Oct 2022.
Amnesty International. Myanmar executes four activists, July 2022.
Human Rights Watch. Myanmar: Scrap Abusive Conscription Law. Feb 2024.
Human Rights Watch. Sexual Violence by Myanmar Military. 2021.
United Nations OHCHR. Flash Report on Military Operations Against Ethnic Villages. 2017 & 2021–2023 updates.
UN Human Rights Office Press Briefing. Concerns on Myanmar Conscription Enforcement. March 18, 2024.
UN Fact-Finding Mission. Findings on Rohingya Genocide. 2018.
International Crisis Group. Myanmar’s Military Manpower Crisis. Feb 2024.
UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar. Quarterly Brief on Airstrikes and Atrocities. Dec 2023.
