The Blotter: Myanmar Government Recruits Thousands of Children to MilitaryThe Myanmar military government is forcibly recruiting thousands of children, some as young as age 10, into its armed forces to make up for high desertion rates, according to a Human Rights Watch report released today.
"Children have become commodities," said Jo Becker of Human Rights Watch. "The government of Burma is one of the world's worst perpetrators when it comes to recruitment of children into the military."
Human rights advocates have been calling for an end to recruitment of child soldiers in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, for years.
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Myanmar protester dies during questioning, body cremated immediately.A Myanmar opposition party member died during interrogation and two activists were arrested as the ruling junta pressed its crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, an exile group said Wednesday.
The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners also said security officers had been threatening dissidents' relatives and neighbors in an attempt to get information on the whereabouts of those involved in last month's anti-government protests, which were brutally suppressed by the military.
The Myanmar exile group, made up of former political prisoners, said authorities had recently informed the family of Win Shwe, 42, that he had died during interrogation in the central region of Sagaing. He and five colleagues had been arrested on Sept. 26, the first day of the crackdown.
The group said Win Shwe, a member of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), was cremated at the detention center. The report could not be independently verified. But in the past, the group has provided detailed, accurate information on political prisoners in Myanmar, also called Burma.
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FOXNews.com - Myanmar Forces Hunt Pro-Democracy Protesters - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe NewsAfter squashing a pro-democracy uprising with guns, Myanmar's junta switched to a terror campaign, dragging people from their homes at night and letting others know they were marked for arrest.
Military vehicles patrolled the streets before dawn Wednesday with loudspeakers blaring, "We have photographs. We are going to make arrests!"
New video footage broadcast Wednesday on CNN showed police and soldiers rounding up demonstrators, clubbing them before loading them onto trucks. In one shot, about six young men are squatting on the street, hands on their heads, cringing. One wearing a red shirt — the color adopted by the protest movement — is singled out for particular abuse.
Residents living near the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar's most revered shrine and a flash point of unrest, reported that police swept through several dozen homes in the middle of the night, dragging away several men for questioning.
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