The Myanmar junta drugs conscripts to keep them sharp on the battlefield and reduce their sensitivity when they commit crimes like torching villages, prisoners of war captured in Kayah (Karenni) State testified.
The Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) clashed with Infantry Battalion 80 under the 66th Light Infantry Division outside Loikaw on Nov. 26, killing 40 junta soldiers, capturing five others, and seizing 22 weapons.
On Dec. 2, the KNDF released a video that shows captive junta soldiers, most of them forcibly recruited since the 2021 coup or drafted under mandatory conscription since last February, confessing to the abuse of drugs in the Myanmar military.
Private Poe Htoo, one of the captives, said all three sections were supplied with methamphetamines.
“We had to torch suspicious houses,” he said.
Another captured private, Myo Thet Min, said, “We had to torch houses that obstructed our field of vision, as well as houses where [anti-regime groups’] uniforms were found.”
He also confessed to using methamphetamine tablets supplied by his superiors. “It is a small tablet and has the WY logo on it. I used it when I felt sleepy on sentry duty.”
The methamphetamine tablets known as ya ba (kyethi in Burmese slang) are mostly produced on the Myanmar side of the Golden Triangle. The Myanmar military is thought to be heavily involved in their trafficking.
The POWs said rank-and-file members were ordered to fight to their last breath, but their officers themselves fled the fighting.
“The major commanding us said he would lead us from the front whatever difficulties we may face. But when the enemy came, he and two other officers ran away. Many of us died in the fighting. We were told to hold our position, but when I looked behind us, [the major] had already fled,” said another captive, Zaw Lin Phyo.
“The major also sometimes uses drugs,” he added.
Medics who defected from the Myanmar military following the coup believe some of the more horrific murders of civilians like beheading, dismembering, and burning alive as well as arson attacks were committed by junta soldiers who were high on drugs.
When resistance forces captured Pinlebu town in Sagaing Region in October, they seized 1,300 soap boxes filled with heroin, the parallel National Unity Government reported. Junta soldiers not only use but also supply heroin, it said.
The morale of junta soldiers including conscripts has hit rock bottom and they are desperate to escape, said captured soldiers in Loikaw. They also complained that they were effectively enslaved by their officers.
Zaw Lin Phyo said: “I urge them [my comrades] to flee if they can. They are bound to die if they stay with the military.”
Poe Htoo said rank-and-file soldiers are overburdened and they want to desert. “Many are depressed and listless. We had to do a lot of work and sometimes had to skip meals.”
“I urge my friends to stop working as slaves for them,” he added.
