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Philippines News Report



The following appeared on the front page of "Today" (A Manila Daily).
Congratulations to our colleagues in the Philippines.

Photo caption " Filipino activists from the Free Burma Coalition-Philippines
wave a manifesto outside the Philippine Plaza, where the Seventh Conference
of Chief Justices in Asia and the Pacific attended by the chief justices of
Asia, including Burma's opened yesterday. Printed at the back of an
activist's T-shirt is a picture of Burma's prodemocracy leader Aung San Suu
Kyi, who writes a column for TODAY."

Burma's army drafts kids 
by Malou Talosig 

A Burmese dissident who came to Manila last week accused the military junta
of drafting children into the army and young girls to work in railway or
road construction without pay. The activist, who asked to be identified only
as Maung, said the State Law and Order Restoration Council, the Burmese
military junta, engages in "slave labor" and targets children because they
are easier to brainwash.

"It main target is the children, whom it kidnaps and forces to join the
army," Maung told today, "it takes boys aged 13 to 14, which is far below
the minimum requirement of 18,".

Maung 33 is active in the underground movement of student organizations in
Burma. He is in Manila to consult with militant civic organizations
supporting the prodemocracy movement in Burma.

Burma, renamed Myanmar in 1989 by the junta, is under pressure from the
international community to stop its human-rights abuses following its entry
into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Reports on the suppression of the political opposition, forced labor, drug
trafficking and attacks on refugee camps in its border with Thailand have
persisted since the junta disregarded the 1991 elections 
Maung said the Rangoon army trains the boys for six months and then sends
then to the frontline to fight the ethnic and opposition forces seeking
self-determination.

The junta recruits young boys because they are easy to indoctrinate,
although many youths do not want to join the army because of its fascistic
reputation.

When the army cannot recruit young boys, he said, the junta orders the
"headmen" of the ethnic community to do the recruiting.

Maung said that young women are also being forced to work in road and
railway projects 'without pay."

Burmese women fleeing to Thailand to escape the civil strife usually end up
as prostituted on the Thai-Burmese border, Maung said.
A L T S E A N - B U R M A
ALTERNATIVE ASEAN NETWORK ON BURMA
*tel: [662] 275 1811/693 4515 *fax: [662] 693 4515 *e-mail: altsean@xxxxxxxxxx
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