God's Army leaders highlight plight of child soldiers

source : Asiatimes
By Johanna Son
19,January,2001

BANGKOK - Johnny and Luther Htoo looked more like lost 13-year-olds than leaders of a band of Myanmese rebels as Thai officials led them by the hand this week after the youngsters surrendered in Thailand's western border with Myanmar.

Indeed they are but children, despite the grown-up habits they have picked up as leaders of the armed rebel group God's Army. Johnny sports a tattoo, while Luther is a chain smoker. Both have been shown in television footage using guns.

The surrender of the ethnic Karen twins on January 16 highlights the plight of some 50,000 child combatants said to be fighting in Myanmar and the question of a viable future for youngsters who have seen and known violence all through their lives.

''Many children of different ethnic nationalities in Myanmar from a young age witness violent atrocities and so violence has become very normal for them,'' Debbie Stothard of the Alternative Asean Network on Myanmar (Altsean) said in an interview.

The use of child soldiers is done by the different ethnic groups fighting the Myanmese military-led regime, and by the Myanmese army itself which activists say has forced youngsters into fighting. Child experts here say that much media coverage of the Myanmese twins as an unusual phenomenon miss the point that they are, most of all, victims of violence.

''Adults often tend to look at them as they are adults and never thought of them as victims, but we have to look at them as victims of a conflict created by adults,'' said Kitiya Phornsadja, child protection project officer at the Asia-Pacific office of the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) here. The twins, like the other members who surrendered with them, have a right to grow up like other children, she said.

Johnny and Luther, whom Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai met on Wednesday in Ratchaburi province, said the children would be reunited with their parents in refugee camps at the border and go to school ''like any other normal kids''. Chuan, who called Johnny and Luther ''just kids'', said they would be treated like refugees fleeing Myanmar.

But the twins will not be able to do that. They will be brought to a nearby refugee camp - and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has already said that the refugee camps at the border have poor living conditions. ''So now they're going to be reunited with their parents, but they will be in a refugee camp. What kind of a life is that for a child?'' asked one child development expert here.

''The fact is that they [the twins] and many other children in our neighboring country have joined the forces, fighting all of their lives,'' Kitiya added. ''What are they going to do when they become adults?''

At least 18 other rebels, including at least two girls, have surrendered to the Thai army together with the twins. At least three of those were turned themselves in were aged 19, 16 and 15.

The use of child soldiers in Myanmar - said to have the largest number of such fighters - has been an ongoing problem. Many youngsters among the ethnic groups who have been fighting the Myanmese regime for many years, having grown up with violence or seen family members die, often have a thirst for revenge and join various rebel groups as they grow older.

The Myanmese regime, led by the State Peace and Development Council, has also borne the of brunt of criticism for its large number of child soldiers. Critics say children are often forced into military service, or feel coerced because doing so would free families from hard labor. Being part of the military allows them access to food during hard times. Stothard says they are being used as ''frontline fodder''.

In a 1999 report, the human rights group Images Asia said army child soldiers are used for the execution of insurgents, in actual conflict, planting landmines and as informers. In recent years, Stothard says, the military has learned to be ''more discreet'' about such recruitment.

God's Army is linked to the killing of six Thai villagers on December 30, in an area known to be patrolled by its members. The twins and followers surrendered after the Thai military worked to cut off food supply routes near the Huay Sut border village, in Suan Phuang, Ratchaburi province. God's Army was formed three years ago by members of various ethnic militia groups, including Karen Christians, animists and Buddhists, local reports say. Johnny and Luther, nine years old at the time, are believed to wield special powers after talk went around that God had called them to lead an armed group to fight Yangon. Their followers, which grew to 200 by 1998, believed they could resist bullets by the Myanmese army.

Early last year, 10 armed Myanmese students, including what Thai officials say was one God's Army militia member, seized a Ratchaburi hospital and held 800 patients, doctors and nurses for 22 hours. All 10 guerrillas, who demanded medical treatment for colleagues hurt in attacks by the Thai and Myanmese armies, were killed by Thai forces. The attacks in border areas, along with the seizure of the Myanmese embassy in Bangkok in October 1999, have cooled the sentiments of many Thais on the country's continued sheltering of large numbers of Myanmese refugees and fighters.

Stothard says incidents like the Ratchaburi seizure show the danger that anti-Yangon groups are becoming tired of non-violent ways of fighting the Myanmese regime. ''These incidents are a symptom of the hopelessness people have,'' she added.