On May 30, 2008, a young man named Ree Reh ( not his real name), turning sixteen, went to the immigration office in the second largest city in Karenni State of Burma, called Demaw So in order to get his national identity card.
He was arrested by a group of soldiers from the Burmese Army, some of whom used to be his friends while they attended basic military training together in Taunggyi, the capital city of Shan State last year.
The arrest is not his first. Ree Reh has been arrested and forced to go to the Taunggyi military camp before. His desire to live a normal civilian life led him to flee from the training camp. After over a month of his escape, he tried to acquire his national identity card in order to travel freely and live a normal live. However, his hope was shattered when he was captured by his friends at the immigration office and re-sent to the military training camp.
"When I arrived at the camp, "they made me lie down on the ground and beat me up," the 16-year old Ree Reh recalled.
Just like Ree Reh, other youngsters, who were from the same military training camp also tried to escape and faced brutal physical punishment.
Ree Reh was first arrested in September last year by the Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 427 on his way to a high school in Demaw Hso. Ree Reh, then a 15-year-old boy, had no choice but to stop his schooling and was forcibly sent to the military camp in Taunggyi without having a chance to inform his family.
He was coerced to attend the six-month-long military training in Taunggyi. During that time, he was often beaten by older soldiers and officers. The reason was simply because, "I asked them to let me go home," said the teenaged boy.
According to Ree Reh, many other teenaged boys who were brought to the military camp were tortured whenever they expressed their homesickness and desire to go home.
"You could literally hear them [the boys] cry at night," said Ree Reh.
After six months of the training, he became Yeh Nyunt, junior soldier. He then, escaped from the Taunggyi camp so that he could go back to his home in Karenni State and live with his family as a normal teenager.
The Taunggyi military camp is a place where forcibly drafted minors are trained to become Yeh Nyunt after that they attend another training in Pin Laung military camp in southern Shan State.
Over the past two decades, the Burmese junta has been criticized by human rights groups for recruiting a large number of child soldiers. The US based Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 40 percent of the 350,000 strong army, may be using child soldiers.
The November 2007 a report of HRW confirms the failure of the junta's special committee to save children from the army. The report says, "Children as young as 10 are being targeted by Burmese military recruiters and threatened with arrest or beating if they refuse to join."
Under age soldiers are always forced to be at the front line according to child soldiers who used to fight against ethnic armed groups based in Burma's border areas.
Mung Myo Min, 15-year-old and 16-year-old So Thu, who were drafted into the army, fled to Thailand in April 2005 after three months of fighting against the Karenni armed resistance group's base called Nyar Mu, 15 kilometers north-west of Mae Hong Son, Thailand.
The two said there were about 150 child soldiers at the front line then.
Earlier this year, on January 30, the New Light of Myanmar, the state-controlled newspaper of the military regime, reported that the military leaders have taken action against 43 officials for recruiting child soldiers and had allowed 792 under age soldiers who served in the army between 2002 and 2007 to go back to their parents.
Rights groups have repeatedly accused the Burma Army of forcing children to fight in conflicts against ethnic armed resistance groups.
The 2008 Child Soldiers Global Report released last May said that Burma remains the most persistent government offender in the world when it comes to the recruitment of child soldiers.
The report estimates that thousands of children are recruited into the armed forces.
At least four to five children arrive every day to Taunggyi military camp alone according to Ree Reh who was forced to attend a six-month basic military training there.
"You can't leave once you have been sent to the camp because they threaten you that you will be locked up and sent to prison," said Ree Reh.
"When I first arrived there, I saw about 140 boys who were brought in two trucks to Pin Laung first and 20 including me were left in the camp," said Ree Reh. "For me, I could not go to Pin Laung for military training because I don't did not have the requisite weight. My weight was just 98 pounds; I needed to have two more pounds to be sent to Pin Laung."
Like it or not, Ree Reh basically had to wait in the Taunggyi military camp until his weight touched 100 pounds to be able to continue the military training in Pin Long. Fortunately, after a month in the camp, he managed to escape again and go back to his village in Demaw Hso last June.
For the time being, Ree Reh is safe and back with his family but his future is not certain. No one knows when he will be arrested again. Every second and minute he lives in fear of possible arrest and more serious torture.
