Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Yangon (Fides Service) - The South East Asian country of Myanmar, has the sad record of the highest number of child soldiers, more than 75,000. In Myanmar rebel groups of many different ethnic origins are fighting the regular troops of the military junta government. Both the army and the rebels make use of child soldiers according to the London based Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.
“We provide assistance for 700 youngsters and some of them are former child soldiers - Archbishop Charles Bo, Catholic Archbishop of Yangon told Fides. The children we help are children who have been abandoned or who have escaped from military groups. We offer them a home, schooling and involve them in social and relational activities”. The Archbishop intends to extend this diocesan service in order to provide more children and young people with the material, scholastic and spiritual assistance they need.
The Archbishop says that education is the main means of helping traumatised minors: “Besides a home and material assistance, these children need education to help them find a sense of dignity and the true meaning of their existence. Although we Catholics are only a small minority here, we provide valid service with elementary and secondary schools. This civil war is ruining the lives and the future of thousands of innocent boys and girls and we do our utmost to help them put this traumatic experience behind them”.
In Myanmar the age for enlisting in the army is 18 but poverty pushes many youngsters to join earlier. Many of them are orphans, street children with no means of living, and there are also girls in this situation says the US based Human Rights Watch who are abused by the soldiers. Human Rights Watch says that some 35 to 40 percent of the regular Myanmar army, 70,000 are minors, enlisted by force and some even kidnapped from school.
Child soldiers are also used by ethnic minority groups in Myanmar Karen, Karenni and Shan, fighting to maintain their identity and customs and subject to repression denounced as ‘ethnic cleansing’. by many international organisations It is estimated that 40% of new recruits fighting government troops along the border with Thailand are minors: 2.000 among the Karen, and 3.000 among the Karenni.
In 2000 the phenomenon of child soldiers in Myanmar was taken up by the international media when 12 year old Karen twins leading an army of children called “God’s Army” took 700 hostages in a hospital in Thailand.
(PA) (Agenzia Fides 18/3/2004 lines 29 word 290)
