Young men in Hpa-An, the capital of Myanmar’s southern Karen state, now avoid being outside after dark, according to residents. Locals say plainclothes members and supporters of the military junta have been moving through the streets, arbitrarily arresting people in their teens, 20s and 30s and forcing them into military service.
A 26-year-old tuk tuk driver, who asked not to be named for his safety, said he worries but must still work. “Some people I know have been taken,” he said, adding that his family urge him to be careful about who he picks up as a passenger.
Leaked documents show push to meet recruitment quotas
Leaked documents seen by journalists show that authorities have been ordered to aggressively fulfil the military’s recruitment quotas across jurisdictions. The directive comes as the junta fights a war of attrition against ethnic armed groups, pro-democracy forces and civilian-led resistance movements.
Myanmar has been in a bloody civil war since February 2021, when the military seized power in a coup and removed the democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2024, after a series of military setbacks, falling morale and rising desertions, the junta introduced a mandatory conscription law. It requires men aged 18 to 35 and women aged 18 to 27 to serve at least two years under military command, and those who refuse face up to five years in prison.
Maj Naung Yoe, a military affairs official at the Myanmar Defense and Security Institute (MDSI) and a former officer who defected to join the anti-coup Civil Disobedience Movement, described the law as one of the most severe actions taken against the civilian population since the coup. An estimated 100,000 young recruits have been conscripted over the past two and a half years, many of them through coercion, extortion and abduction, he said.
A missing husband and a sale through the ward office
Ma Moe San Pan, who lives in Yangon, last saw her 33-year-old husband, Phyo Wai, on 8 May 2025, after an argument at home. She said she had confided in a cousin who worked at the local ward administration office and asked him to bring her husband back. Two days later, Phyo Wai called her from a military recruitment centre on the other side of the city.
Ma Moe San Pan said the ward office had sold her husband to another ward for 4 million kyats ($900; £680) to fill that ward’s recruitment quota. The cousin could not be reached for comment. She then lost a further 4.5 million kyats to strangers who falsely promised to secure his release.
U Maung Maung Lwin, administrator of the ward to which Phyo Wai was taken, admitted to reporters that he had played a role in sending him to the recruitment authorities. He said transfers from other townships do occur when local quotas cannot be met, but denied that money was involved in such cases or in Phyo Wai’s conscription. Ma Moe San Pan said her husband had been made to sign documents. “What I cannot accept is that our own ward administration office allegedly sold him to another ward,” she said.
Ma Moe San Pan has filed police complaints over the sale of her husband and the money she lost to scammers. Police accepted the complaint but refused to include human trafficking charges, saying such a case could only be registered if a person had been sold abroad. She does not know where her husband is now.
Tactics used to meet quotas and profit from recruits
Naung Yoe said rising demand and a shrinking pool of eligible men have fuelled an illicit market for recruits. He said security officials have turned to a range of methods to find people, including:
- arresting young people at road checkpoints
- tracking and ambushing workers on their daily commutes
- setting traps through fake job advertisements
- forcibly entering homes and arresting people during guest-list inspections
In late August, police in Yangon arrested a member of the Fire Services Department, a branch of the home affairs ministry, and his son-in-law. They were accused of abducting four young men with the intention of selling them for military conscription. Police said the reserve fire brigade unit commander lured the men with promises of work and held them in purpose-built detention rooms at his house. He has been charged with kidnapping or abducting a person to wrongfully confine them and faces up to seven years in prison. Attempts to reach the police station where he is held were unsuccessful.
Naung Yoe said lower-level administrative bodies, military personnel and local criminal gangs all use these tactics, and that recruits are sold to units facing manpower shortages. He also said wealthier people can pay to replace themselves with someone more financially vulnerable. Although conscription orders are meant to apply evenly, based on population, the poor are disproportionately affected, he said.
Rights groups and analysts question the junta’s position
Open-source research group Myanmar Witness said in July that it had analysed hundreds of missing-person notices collected from Facebook between 2021 and 2025. It found that notices for January rose from four in 2021, before the coup, to 82 in 2025, after the conscription law took effect. The group concluded that much of the military’s recruitment appears to happen through detention, coercion and disappearance rather than formal call-up. Men and boys made up most of those reported missing.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Fortify Rights have also said the military is abducting civilians and forcing them into service. Observers note that reinforcements have helped the regime win back some territory, although they say the war is far from over. Dr Sandeep Singh, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore, described the conscription drive as another step in the junta’s efforts to enlist unwilling youth. The MDSI said in a June statement that “the generals have benefited by using military law to make the citizens fight against each other.”
