Independent Mon News Agency (IMNA)

July 4, 2003

More escapees from basic military training in Ye Township, Mon State

Among the villagers in Ye Township, who escaped from the SPDC’s forcible recruitment for basic training school, some robe as Buddhist monks and some fled into New Mon State Party controlled area.

On July 2, the local Burmese Army’s LIB No. 343 bases in the northern part of Ye Township, Mon State, forcibly recruited about 500 villagers from 4 Mon villages to attend the basic military training schools in their base.

Because of this order, some Mon men went into their villages’ Buddhist Monasteries and robed as monks in there, while many other villagers escaped into the control areas (or liberated areas) of the New Mon State Party as they denied to attend the training.

The villages who are under the LIB No. 343 order to attend the training are: Sonatha to send 100 men; Sonpayite to send 100 men; Apa-raing to send 100 men; and Aru-taung to send 200 men respectively. Those villages have different population number and have 200 to 500 households in each village, they recruited 100 men from small villages and 200 villagers from big villages.

While IMNA asked an escapee for their reason of fleeing, he said, “We don’t have any desire to attend the training school and we are not encouraging fighting each other. They (the army) forced us to attend training, so that we have to flee.”

Recruitment of the villagers or town residents to attend the basic military school was instructed by “Ministry of Home Affairs”. Therefore, the respective authorities from Township Peace and Development Council gathered the names of villagers or town residents who needed to attend the training.

Any village tract (one village tract has 3 to 10 villages depending on the geographical situation) has to send 1000 men and most men between 18 and 40 years old must register as trainees.

The objectives of the training are: to know how to equip basic arms and to break up the crowds or demonstrators if there is a pro-democracy demonstration occur in Burma like 1988. The authorities also formed ‘Anti-Strike Groups’ in most towns and some villages in Mon State.

Some members of Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), the SPDC’s puppet organization, also escaped into Thailand to deny attending of training school.

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