BANGKOK, Mar 18 (IPS) - Till last September, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) office in military-ruled Burma had received few complaints about children being forced to join the army. But that is no longer the case.

In a new report, the ILO makes a pointed reference to the shift noticed since September 2007, the month when the Burmese junta launched a brutal crackdown on peaceful street protests led by thousands of Buddhist monks chanting a prayer for ''loving kindness.''
 
Prior to that month, the majority of complaints received about forced labour ''concerned public works under local administration with only a few military-related complaints and cases of underage recruitment,'' reveals a report submitted to the ILO's governing body, which is currently meeting at the labour rights agency's headquarters, in Geneva.

''Since September that pattern has been reversed with majority of complaints now being military-related and underage recruitment cases,'' adds the report prepared by the ILO's Rangoon office of the 15 ''child soldier/forced recruitment cases'' between Feb. 26, 2007 and Feb. 25, 2008.

What happened to an ILO account of a 14-year-old Burmese boy in late October may be typical. He had gone to a market in Rangoon, the former capital, to lend a hand at a stall run by his elder brother. But he was stopped by soldiers and taken in a truck to an army recruiting office.

In fact, the ILO admits that its record of young boys forced to swell the ranks of the 'Tatmadaw', the Burmese name for the armed forces, is not an accurate picture. ''We believe that the number of complaints we have received does not reflect the size of the problem. It is the tip of the iceberg,'' Steve Marshall, the ILO's liaison officer in Rangoon, said in an IPS interview.

''We understand there are some people who operate as brokers. They use force or trickery to take children to recruiting officers,'' he added. ''We have lodged complaints with the government and it has responded quickly, discharging the recruit and disciplining the recruiting officer.''

But human rights groups warn the international community not to be fooled by the junta's claims that it is trying to end the scourge of forced conscription. The London-based Burma Campaign UK has ''dismissed as total nonsense'' claims by a state-run newspaper that ''hundreds of children have been returned to their families in recent years''.

In 2004, the military leaders in Burma, also called Myanmar, responded to growing international criticism about the recruitment of child soldiers by setting up a high-powered group to deal with the problem. But the record of the Committee for Prevention of Military Recruitment of Underage Children has proved wanting, with its regular statements tending to denounce reports of child soldiers in the country than helping to curb this on-going violation of labour and children's rights.

A November 2007 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirms the failure of the junta's special committee to save children from the Tatmadaw. ''Children as young as 10 are being targeted by Burmese military recruiters and threatened with arrest or beaten if they refuse to join,'' revealed the report by the New York-based global rights lobby.

''Child soldiers are sometimes forced to participate in human rights abuses, such as burning villages and using civilians for forced labour,'' adds the report, 'Sold to be soldiers: The recruitment and use of child soldiers in Burma'. ''Those who attempt to escape or desert are beaten, forcibly re-recruited or imprisoned.''

The dismal tone of this report echoed a similar tone of a 2002 report by HRW dealing with the growing number of child soldiers in Burma. That report, 'My gun was as tall as me', estimated that ''70,000 or more of the Burma army's estimated 350,000 soldiers may be children.''

And the hunting ground for the army's recruiters to grab children has changed little over the last five years. Soldiers and civilians assigned the job target markets, railway stations, bus stations, ferry terminals, streets and festivals. The rewards for such forced conscription missions have varied, though, with some being paid in cash of up to 25 US dollars per child or given a bag of rice.

The gap between the junta's rhetoric and the reality in the South-east Asian country is stark, says David Scott Mathieson, HRW's Burma consultant. ''There is a massive disconnect between the laws and regulations the Burmese regime has made and the reality on the ground.''

''There is widespread forced recruitment of children into the army,'' he told IPS. ''It is part of a mercantile system. The battalions have to meet their quotas of recruits, and if they do so they are rewarded.''

The junta's hunger for young Burmese boys to fatten the ranks of the Tatmadaw is rooted in a shift in military policy after 1988. That year saw a pro-democracy uprising, drawing tens of thousands of civilians to the streets, to challenge a military dictatorship that had been in power since a 1962 coup. And the army responded with bullets, killing some 3,000 unarmed demonstrators.

Soon after, the Tatmadaw, which was a much leaner and smaller and had no record of child soldiers, was ordered to expand to strengthen the junta's grip on power. It went from being a force of some 180,000 to its current number of nearly 400,000 -- at least on paper.

Yet, as a Burmese military analyst notes, the Tatmadaw has been hit with a high desertion rate, adding to the number of soldiers it keeps losing in the on-going conflict in the border areas with ethnic rebel groups. ''A northern commander reported that during a four-month period in 2006 the army had lost an entire brigade of soldiers due to desertion,'' Win Min, who lectures at Payap University in northern Thailand, said in an interview. ''That is over 3,000 soldiers based on the strength of a battalion in Burma.''

It was worse during the previous year, when internal military records reveal that during a four-month period in 2005 the Tatmadaw was hit with 4,701 deserters across the country, adds Win Min. ''My estimate is that by the end of last year the situation may have got worse. The army may have been hit with nearly 15,000 deserters in 2007.''

But how many soldiers fled the Tatmadaw after being ordered to fire on the highly revered Buddhist monks who led last September's protest still remains unknown, he revealed. ''This may come out when the commanders have their next quarterly meeting, which has not been held since May last year.''