18, former child soldier
ETHNICITY: Burman
BIRTHPLACE: Hlaingthaya Township, Burma
INTERVIEWED IN: Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
Taken off the streets at nine years old and forced to become a child soldier, Hla Min was fighting on the front line in Karen State by age fourteen. He traveled for an entire day to meet us in Cox’s Bazar, a coastal city home to many Burmese refugees in Bangladesh—the country to which he fled in 2007 after the Saffron Revolution.11 He told us his story until 1 a.m. that night, knowing it would be our only opportunity to meet before he returned to work on a tobacco farm the next day. Hla Min is one former child soldier in a country frequently cited for having the most child soldiers in the world.22 Analysts have pointed out that the Tatmadaw’s ongoing forced conscription of minors is one of the crucial factors allowing the military to increase its size and therefore its strength.
I’d like to tell you the story of how I joined the army as a child.
I was nine years old, and I was living in the Hlaingthaya Township in Rangoon Division. It was a school holiday on the full moon day in November, and we were making a picnic. Traditionally, during school holidays, students in Burma have to hold a ceremony to honor their teachers, and then we make a picnic with our friends. At around 8 p.m., one of my friends and I went out to buy some chicken. At that moment, an army truck came and took us.
When they pulled us into the back of the truck, I found there were six or seven soldiers inside. My friend and I thought they were killers and I was worried. They made us lie down on the floor—there were no seats—and when I tried to shout, they covered my mouth with their hands. They said, “You keep quiet, you have to come with us.”
My friend and I were afraid but we didn’t say anything to each other. I had heard from my parents that soldiers beat and arrested people in my village. I’d also heard that soldiers shot people in the street, so I was afraid that they might kill me. The drive felt very long and I had no chance to run away.
When the truck stopped, we got out and I saw the army base. My friend and I had been brought to a Burmese army battalion in Rangoon Division.
I FOUND CHILDREN THERE
When we arrived at the army base, my friend and I were brought to separate cells. They were like prison cells, and they chained the doors shut. I had no chance to talk to my friend.
The battalion compound was big and had dormitories, garages, a big banyan tree, and plants inside. There were many soldiers living there, but I don’t know how many. After two or three days, I was asked to carry water. They didn’t give me a military uniform; I just had on my own pants and shirt. On a normal day, I had to get up before 6 a.m. and work during the day. I worked with my friend every day. We had to fetch water, water the plants and garden, and also help do chores and cook in the kitchen. I did everything as asked by the cooks and sergeants. All of the work was very tiring and hard because I hadn’t had any experience working before.
I was given only two meals a day, at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Most of the time I had the meals alone, but sometimes I got to eat with the cooks, or with my friend in the kitchen. Sometimes I couldn’t eat because the rice and the curry were not good. They provided only rice, bean curry, morning glory, roselle, and gourd—only the cooks ate meat and fish.33 If they had leftovers they’d give them to us, but sometimes after eating I wasn’t full and I’d be left hungry.
At night, I was confined to a cell where I slept alone. There was no chance of escape, and I didn’t think I would be able to succeed if I tried because the gates were guarded by so many soldiers.
My friend and I were very lonely while living at the army base. When we first arrived, we were not allowed to talk to each other. We were confined to separate rooms and we weren’t allowed to play together. After working all day, finishing dinner, and washing the dishes, we were locked up in the rooms again. Sometimes they scolded and beat me when I dropped a bucket of water, or a plate or bowl.
During those times, I missed my home very much. I cried for my mother and for my family. I was the youngest of five, and I would play with my brothers and sisters and go to school with them. My parents really loved me and they always made me happy. Sometimes when I cried, I was beaten by the cooks and by the sergeants. Sometimes they slapped me and sometimes they beat me with a stick. While they were beating me they would say, “Why are you crying? Stop your crying!”
I lived like this for about two months inside the Rangoon army base. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me next.
WHEN I WAS GROWN UP
After about two months at the army base, I was sent to a recruitment center. I think it was called the Mingaladon Recruitment Center. When I first arrived, I found almost seventy children there who were around my age. There were some children who had also been picked up from the street.
We had to get up at six o’clock in the morning, and then everyone had to make their bed and wash themselves. After that, we went to the dining hall and had fried rice with a fried egg and a cup of tea for breakfast. The food at the recruitment center was much better than at the previous army base. After breakfast we started working out, doing exercises like push-ups, pull-ups, and running. We ate our lunch at ten-thirty a.m. and then everyone took a nap. After napping, we were allowed to play football or wrestle.
Sometimes the soldiers let me play with the other children, and sometimes they asked me to fight with other children. The leaders would come to us and tell us to wrestle, so we had to fight with each other until one of us fell down—the person left standing won. Sometimes I won, but sometimes I lost. I tried to beat the others and when I won, I was happy because I was given snacks. If someone won, they’d give a snack to them or buy them clothes. Sometimes the army soldiers and officers told me, “When you grow up, you will have to hold a gun like me.” When soldiers told us that, we felt really pleased.
After football or wrestling, we took a shower at 4 p.m., and then we had dinner. After dinner, we’d go back to the dorms and watch military fighting movies. We watched movies about fighting between soldiers and rebels almost every day. We were asked to go to bed at 8 p.m., and everyone slept in their own bed on the floor. The dorm where I stayed had a wooden floor, brick walls, and a zinc roof. The door to the dorm was made of iron, and it was locked and guarded by soldiers outside while we slept.
At the recruitment center I got to stay with many other children and I had time to play. The adults there indulged us and never made us study or read books. We were free to move around the recruitment center however we wanted, but we were not allowed to leave. The compound was guarded by lots of adult soldiers. I spent two years like this at the recruitment center.
When I was grown up—around thirteen or fourteen years old—I was sent to a training center for four and a half months in Pathein, in Irrawaddy Division. The recruitment center sent me there in one of its trucks. The training center was very far, and it took almost an entire day to get there. I was very tired when I arrived.
At the training center, we had to train in the heat under the bright sun, and even in the rain. There were more than 250 trainees there, and the training was very hard; sometimes I couldn’t stand it. They asked me to run with a gun, and I was punished if I failed—my trainer would come and kick me with his shoe and then make me stare directly into the sun for an hour.
We were fed some rice with bean curry and dried fish and a little bit of fruit. The food was not good. After dinner we had to do night duty, guarding the gates of the training base. Sometimes I felt homesick during my training and I would cry; I wanted to see my mother and my father.
Every morning we had to declare our loyalty to the army. By the time I’d completed training, I started to believe in the army. I was granted a uniform, a gun, and my private rank ID number—I was a soldier. After they gave me these things, I started to feel a little excited and confident that I could handle this kind of work. I believed I would be able do things like go to battle, like the soldiers who had trained us.
My friend and I were separated after we completed training; I don’t know where he was sent. I was sent to Light Infantry Battalion number 564 in Arakan State, which is very far from Rangoon. When I was there, I was sometimes asked to cut wood and clear the bushes in the forest. But most of the time, I just did tasks at the battalion headquarters as directed. Then, a few years later, I was sent from Arakan State to the front line in Karen State.
THE FRONT LINE
I was around fourteen years old when I was ordered to go to the front line. My officer told me, “You have to go and fight the guerillas in Karen State.” During my training, and then at our battalion meetings, the leaders always preached about how cruel the rebels were, so at the time I believed the guerillas were trying to take my country and kill my people.
We were asked to search for the guerillas and fight them. I was sent to the front line with soldiers who were older than me, and also some who were around my age. I had to dress in uniform and bring a rucksack with my rations. My rations included rice, a thin blanket, a mosquito net for sleeping, and a tarp for the rainy season. I also had to carry my gun, four cartridges of bullets for it, and two grenades, as well as two big cases of bullets for the unit’s machine guns, which were a type of light machine gun made in Burma.
I was beaten and slapped three times by my captain because I was too slow folding up my tarp. I had to roll it, fold it, and put it in my bag, but my captain said I didn’t do it right and then he beat me. As punishment, I had to carry the unit’s cooking pot.
We had to move around a lot while we were in the jungles and mountains. It took us over four months to go around and search for guerillas. Sometimes we starved because food rations had not been sent to us by our battalion, so we ate anything we could find.
We slept in a different place every night. When the sun set, we had to camp at the nearest possible spot. When it rained, we had no place to take cover. Sometimes we didn’t have a chance to sleep because we had to sit and do guard duty at night. Everyone had to do it.
One day, while I was carrying the pot, I heard a blast behind me and I fell down, unconscious. When I woke up, I thought I had lost my legs, but it wasn’t a landmine, it was a remote-controlled bomb that had detonated. It had hit my backside and my head—the shrapnel had injured my right ear and cheek, my back, chest, and arms, but the pot had helped to protect me.
More than 100 soldiers had been walking together when the blast happened. The guerillas were behind us and they had set off remote-controlled bombs as we passed through. Four other soldiers and I were injured. The injured were taken by the Signal Corps to an emergency medical clinic set up by the army, and we received emergency medical treatment there.44 The clinic was small and could only accommodate ten patients, but they provided emergency medical treatment to the injured soldiers, especially those who had lost their arms and legs. The people in the clinic were very sympathetic to me. From there, I was sent to Taung Hospital to recover.55
WE COULD NOT REFUSE THEIR ORDERS
It took me about a month to recover. After I was better, I was sent back to my army battalion and then on to the front line again.
While we were on the front line, our officers ordered us to completely destroy the local people. They told us that even the children had to be killed if we saw them. I saw soldiers abducting young girls, dragging them from their houses and raping them. At the time, I felt that those girls were like my sisters.
Sometimes the officers would find one of their soldiers who they didn’t like, or who was very frightened, and the officer would order the soldier to do that kind of thing, like rape the local women. If the soldiers did not follow the orders, they were shot or beaten. We could not refuse their orders; we had to follow them.
I once saw the guerillas at their camp in Three Pagodas Pass in Karen State. I didn’t know anything else about them at the time other than they looked like us—they had black skin and they wore uniforms. I felt sympathetic for them because we had a base to go and rest at, but they had to stay in the jungle all the time.
MY FIRST TIME IN BATTLE
There were some battles on the front line in Karen State. One time, four soldiers were on the top of the mountain keeping guard, while twelve other soldiers went down to get some water from the stream at the bottom of the mountain. I was halfway up the mountain, doing security patrol with three other soldiers. Two additional soldiers were deployed below us.
It usually took about fifteen minutes to get water. Before the soldiers went down to get water that day, the guerillas had already laid down some remote-controlled bombs that were all connected by wires. When the soldiers went close to the stream, the bombs exploded. All of the soldiers at the bottom of the mountain died.
Then the guerillas turned toward us to fight, because our soldiers on the top of the mountain were shooting at them. Those on the top of the mountain gave us orders. I crouched near a rock for cover. It was my first time in battle, and I was both very excited and very frightened, but I just fired back. The battle went on for more than half an hour. One of the soldiers who had gone to get water was still alive, but the guerillas approached and shot him dead. Two of the four soldiers who were doing guard duty died, and the two soldiers deployed below us also died. The guerillas fought against us for half an hour and then retreated. When the battle had finished, there were fifteen or sixteen of our soldiers killed, and some of the guerillas had died as well.
When the battle finished, we still had not eaten and we had no water. We were so exhausted, but we were ordered to march after the guerillas. Some soldiers could not walk, and they were beaten. The captain said to us, “If you cannot continue this battle, I will kill you.” One of my friends asked permission from the captain to use the toilet. When he went, he took his gun with him and committed suicide. He couldn’t go on. Another one of the soldiers, one of my friends, was hungry and he cut a banana from a tree. When he did that, a landmine got him. I saw him lose both of his legs.
I cannot say why I survived the battle; it depends on your luck. Some people were hit by mines and some were killed, but I was saved.
After the battle, I accompanied the injured soldiers to an area away from the front line. From there, I was sent back to my battalion in Arakan State. I was very sorry because I had to leave without any of my friends. I was also very sad when I saw the survivors of the battle who had lost their arms and legs.
I wanted to desert from the army whenever I thought about my family, but it was not possible for me. If I deserted, I would be jailed.
I WOULD RATHER BE KILLED
I was in Buthidaung when the Saffron Revolution started.66 There was no uprising where I was. It had started in Sittwe and then it spread to Rangoon. My commanding officer said everyone must be ready. We were told that if the monk or student protests grew, and if they were fighting against the authorities, then we needed to fight back. If the students and monks used sticks, we had to use sticks. If the students and monks used slingshots, we had to use slingshots. If they used guns, we had to use guns.
Then I was sent to Sittwe to attack the monks. At this time, I started to feel really bad about the army.
We took four powered schooners to Sittwe. It took about three hours. We were about seventy soldiers. When we arrived, our leaders told us to make slingshots with mud pellets and use them to attack the monks. I had to make 500 pellets. We were equipped with sticks, slingshots, and guns. Our leaders told us that it didn’t matter if it was monks or students—they were marching together, and we had to shoot at them both.
I was in the streets in Sittwe for three days monitoring the protestors, but we didn’t do anything to the monks and students because they were protesting peacefully. At first, I thought that the monks and students were just rioting, but later, I learned that they were protesting because of the people’s hardship and suffering. They were demanding that the government do something to solve this problem the people were facing. I realized it was similar to the situation in our battalion, because soldiers are poor and get only a small salary. The people who were demonstrating had many difficulties similar to those of soldiers’ families. I felt very empathetic and I realized that what the leaders told us was not true.
Since that moment, I stopped believing in the army. I really respect monks and I could not do this to them, so I decided to flee. I felt confident about my decision. I decided I would rather be killed than stay and attack the monks.
One friend and I discussed how we were gaining nothing by working as soldiers, and we decided to run away from our battalion together. We tried to escape many times, but failed.
One day that October, my friend and I packed up all of our things to try escaping again. We were back at our battalion in Buthidaung. At five in the evening we left the dormitory and came across one of our battalion’s commanders. He was suspicious of us and ordered us to follow him. When we got to the door of his dormitory, he asked, “Are you trying to run away?” We denied his accusation. He opened up our bags, asked us questions. He beat us, but we didn’t tell him anything. He told us we would be sent for at 7 p.m., and we would be kept in a cell. Then, while he was speaking, he turned to go inside his dormitory—at that moment we left our bags and ran away.
The Buthidaung stream was next to the battalion headquarters. We swam across it and then we took the jungle road by the coast from Buthidaung to Maungthaw. While we were running, we didn’t talk about anything except our route. We just said, “Turn right here,” and, “Left there.” We slept for a night at a monastery. We saw people on the way, but I didn’t talk to them because we were in Arakan State and I am Burman—if I spoke in Burmese, they would automatically know I was a soldier. My friend is Rakhine, so he spoke their language; he asked people for help in finding our way. We had no food as we went on, and we could not sleep because we had to avoid the NaSaKa forces, who were searching for us after we’d escaped.77 We had to be careful because there were NaSaKa forces located right on the border.
From the jungle route, we arrived at the border on the bank of the Naf River. It took us five days altogether to reach the border to Bangladesh. I didn’t know much about Bangladesh. We just ran to escape, but Maungthaw was the only way to run, and if you proceed from Maungthaw, you go to Bangladesh. That’s why we decided to go there. If we had stayed in Maungthaw, we would have been found and arrested.
When we reached the Naf River, the boat operators told us that the other side of the river was Bangladesh. We asked them to take us over, but they refused because we had no money. Out of fear of the NaSaKa forces there, we decided to swim across.
The Naf River is wide and deep, and we crossed during a time of flooding; the current was very fast and strong. We started swimming at around nine-thirty or ten in the morning. I saw only one tree in the middle, and I made it my target. Sometimes we swam normally, and sometimes we floated along the current lying on our backs because we were tired. There was one buoy in the middle of the river where we stopped for a while. It took nearly one hour to get across the river.
When we arrived at the Bangladesh riverbank, there was a Rakhine village. There were also some BDR—the Bangladesh border guard force.88 I don’t think that they saw us; if they had seen us swimming across the river, we would have been apprehended. When we arrived in the village, my friend spoke with the people. He told the villagers that we were soldiers, and because we had to swim across the river, they sympathized with us.
We stayed in the village monastery that day, but soon we heard that the Bangladeshi police or the BDR might come, so we had to move into the jungle and hide. Some men from the village told a Rakhine friend of theirs in Cox’s Bazar that two soldiers had arrived from Burma. He came to get us and brought us back to his home. He took care of us. His name is Aung Tun.
NOW I’M NOT THE SAME
Life is very difficult in Bangladesh. When I first arrived, Aung Tun and his family looked after me. But they are also poor and I felt bad that they were giving me so much, so I try to survive by myself now. Now I am staying apart from them and working on a tobacco farm to survive. Sometimes I feel ill there because I don’t get to have meals regularly.
Aung Tun helped me because I am a young boy and because we come from the same land. I told him my story and he told me about how he also left his homeland after 1988. When he told me that the military government killed monks and students in 1988, I was very surprised.99
Aung Tun is a politician, and he always talks with me about the political situation in Burma. Now I know that the guerillas are fighting for their freedom, for their rights, and that they don’t like the ruling military regime. When I was in the army, I thought the guerillas were trying to break my country, to destroy my country—this is how I used to think. Not now, now I’m not the same.
I think the insurgents will fight until they get their freedom. I understand why they fight; I agree that you should fight for your rights. Right now I don’t want to say anything about the soldiers in the Burmese military, but I see the ruling general as a king of hell or a demon. I don’t know why people join the military. As for myself, I was forced to be a soldier. If I had stayed with my family, I would not have been a soldier.
IF THEY RECRUIT SOMEONE, THEN THEY CAN QUIT THE ARMY
I have had no contact with my family since the army took me. I don’t remember a lot from when I was young. I may not even be able to recognize my family. I do remember that we were a poor family, and that the village I was born in had some farmland and some trees.
I remember that when I went to school for the first time, my family was really happy.
I liked going to school because I like to learn. I never got to study in the army. I was only taught about guns.
My family may think that I have died, or that I am lost. I would like to see my family but I don’t know how to look for them. When Nargis devastated Burma, I heard on the radio that there were casualties and destruction, such as trees falling down and villages destroyed in the Irrawaddy and Rangoon Divisions.1010 I don’t know what happened to my family when Nargis came; I’m not sure if they are alive or dead.
I don’t blame my parents for what happened; I don’t blame myself either. It is not my fault. I can’t blame anyone except the SPDC government. I think the army takes children because they need to strengthen their forces, increase the number of soldiers. I think there is a reward for each soldier who catches a child. Any time a soldier recruits someone to join the force, they get a lot of money. Older soldiers told me that if they recruit someone, then they can quit the army.
I think the soldiers who forced children to join the army should be killed because they didn’t think of the children as their own sons or daughters. I also think that the soldiers who have raped women should be killed, because they didn’t think of the women as their own sisters.
I BELIEVE I WILL GO BACK ONE DAY
I’m registered with the UNHCR in Bangladesh. I applied for refugee status with the help of some Burmese people living in Bangladesh—they told me that it was very useful and important for me since I am living here now, so I applied. The UNHCR accepted my application and then I had two interviews; the first one was ten days after I first turned my application in. After one year, the UN recognized me as a refugee and issued me an ID card.
One time when I was working on the tobacco farm, police came to catch people from Burma and I had to run away. I went back to my room and I searched for my card but I realized I had lost it. I have already informed the UNHCR about what happened, but the UNHCR hasn’t given me a new card. I don’t know the reason. I believe that if I have the ID card I will be protected.
I have so many difficulties trying to survive. I don’t know the local spoken or written languages in Bangladesh. In order to have a good future, I need help from others. I need an education or vocational training to help me survive. I grew up in the army so I don’t have an education. I am illiterate. Right now, in order to survive, I have to work on a tobacco plantation and live day to day. But I want to have a career. I like driving vehicles and, if possible, I’d like to improve my life by having a career as a mechanic. I want to have a place to stay and food to eat.
I have met some Rohingya people in Bangladesh.1111 In Burma, soldiers used to beat the Rohingya people, so some Rohingya are really angry at soldiers. Some Rohingya people here are kind to me, and some hate me. I understand why people don’t like Burmans—I also believe that they are bad. I don’t mean the people are bad, but I believe the authorities like the SPDC and the NaSaKa are bad.
I WAS LIKE AN ANIMAL
I was like an animal while growing up in the military. I did everything that I was told, and in turn, I received the food they provided. In life outside of the military, you can have hobbies and find other things you’re interested in. In the military, you will never find those things.
I started to learn about Aung San Suu Kyi when I arrived in Bangladesh. Here, I have the freedom to learn. In 2009, I participated in a protest to demand freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi and to gain democracy in the 2010 elections. I decided to join the protest because I want people in Bangladesh to know about Aung San Suu Kyi, and because I’d like to motivate people inside Burma. I felt happy to participate. We walked for thirty days from Dhaka to Cox’s Bazar. Six men and seven women did the protest together. As we were walking, Bangladeshi people encouraged us along the way.
I hope that Aung San Suu Kyi will be free. She must be free first for there to be democracy. If a lot of people inside Burma and also the UN support Aung San Suu Kyi, then we will get democracy and human rights. Only then will I be able to go back to Burma and have the chance to see my family again.
1 In 2007, Burma’s ruling junta drastically reduced government fuel subsidies, which led to a hike in transportation and commodity prices. Thousands of monks subsequently launched the Saffron Revolution, a nationwide monk-led uprising that grabbed the attention of global media and was brutally suppressed by the SPDC. For more on the Saffron Revolution, see page 468 of the appendix.
2 The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child sets eighteen as the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities, for recruitment into armed groups, and for compulsory recruitment by governments.
3 Roselle is a hibiscus plant often used in beverages in Southeast Asia.
4 Signal Corps is the branch of an army responsible for military communications.
5 Taung Goat is a township in Arakan State, the southwestern-most state in Burma.
6 Buthidaung is a town in Arakan State, the southwestern-most state in Burma.
7 The NaSaKa, an acronym for “Nay-Sat Kut-kwey Ye,” is a border task force established in 1992 under the direct command of the SPDC. They are frequently cited for human rights violations against the Rohingya and other people living in Arakan State.
8 The BDR is the border guard of Bangladesh. The acronym derives from its former name, the Bangladesh Rifles. Since 2009, it has been known as the Border Guards Bangladesh.
9 In 1988, deteriorating economic conditions sparked nationwide protests against the ruling government. Though an accurate count is hard to determine, it is typically estimated that 3,000 were killed during the crackdown, however, estimates run as high as 10,000. See appendix 463-465 for information about the uprising.
10 Cyclone Nargis was the name of a storm that ripped through Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta in 2008. Marked by 132 mph winds and a storm surge of twelve feet, the cyclone was the most destructive in Burma’s recorded history. It killed an estimated 140,000 people and razed 700,000 homes to the ground.
11 There are tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees who have fled persecution in Burma and who are now living in Bangladesh.