My last couple of blog posts on conscription focused on people still in Myanmar, but it seems they are in the minority of young men remaining. Even they said all their friends had already left to cross the border.

“Soe,” a young man who is now in Bangkok tells us that he wasn’t planning on leaving until all his friends came over to say goodbye to him on their way out. Seeing that he would be the only one left, leaving him both vulnerable and lonely, he decided to tag along. He says people at the checkpoints teased them about how everyone from their city seemed to be going to Thailand. While Soe jokes about this now, the checkpoints do make it extremely difficult to both travel within Myanmar and to get to the border.

“Aye” is a young woman currently in Southern Shan State who works for PYO and is avoiding conscription and arrest for her activism. She says, “If you don’t know how to lie, you’ll quickly be arrested.” The day before our interview, she had traveled 30 miles to escape fighting and had to pass through 7 checkpoints, extending the trip to 1.5 nerve-wrecking hours.

Aye and her colleague were prepared, having deleted all recordings of human rights abuses and replacing them with “sexy photos” on their camera. They also had a story for the guards, explaining that the cash they were carrying was for their sick grandmother’s funeral. Even with this preparation and plenty of practice lying, Aye said she was terrified the whole time.

People pay a lot of money to avoid detention at these checkpoints – either in bribes or to smugglers who take routes through the jungle. Soe had to pay 1.2 million kyat to an agent to be smuggled across the border in a truck packed with others fleeing the war. Other smugglers take people by foot through the jungle, crossing in the wilderness where Thai security doesn’t bother patrolling.

Smugglers often sell packages, allowing them to demand more money. Soe’s agent promised him and his friends documents and jobs upon arrival, but so far Soe has gone through 4 or 5 jobs, none of which have provided stability. He says they are often short-term jobs like painting or building, or the employers get nervous about employing undocumented workers and fire them.

Soe says he’s also been scammed a couple of times because the employers say they’ll pay him after the job is done but never do. The employers know how desperate Burmese refugees are to earn money to pay back their travel debts and survive here, so they take advantage of their labor.

When we interviewed Soe, he had just started a painting job and recieved half the payment in advance. He says this is a good sign, but he hasn’t been able to go to work for a few days because of police presence outside his building. Soe tells us encountering police in Bangkok is dangerous. Even traffic police can arrest and deport undocumented refugees. Soe tells us that he says a prayer every time he leaves his building.

Some police ask for bribes, which is better than deportation, but it adds to the enormous debt these young people already have. Soe tells us about a friend who bumped into a police officer and had to pay 14,000 baht of the 15,000 he had on him.

This debt isn’t an individual burden either. When these young people flee their home, their families and villages are often held accountable.

“Khun,” another young man who escaped to Bangkok, tells us that he was targeted for conscription back in February because he had friends in a military-allied militia. When word reached the military that Khun was planning to escape, they showed up at his house, and his family pretended he had already left while he hid and escaped out the back. His family was told that they would have to pay 100,000 kyat within the year or suffer consequences of his escape.

Khun tells us this price has gone up since he left. He knows another young man who escaped to Thailand whose family was told to pay 10 million kyat or his mother would be arrested.

Aye describes this method of collective punishment being applied to entire villages when they don’t turn out enough men for conscription. If the military finds out that the village leader has been taking bribes and under-reporting the number of people eligible for conscription or that everyone has fled, they demand thousands of kyat from each household.

With all these unpredictable fines, bribes, and costs, Soe tells us most people expect it will take 1-2 years to pay off their debts, and that’s with a job. Of those we interviewed in Thailand, he was the only one with a job, and even he wasn’t sure it would last more than two weeks.

Average income of households in 2019 – Urban: 3-6 million kyat per year ($924 – 1850 USD); Rural: 0.5-1.5 million kyat per year ($160-500 USD)

$1 USD = 3,248 kyat as of 17 July 2024