The junta’s third-in-command General Maung Maung Aye has threatened to take legal action against draft dodgers as the regime continues to lose battles across Myanmar.
The chief of the general staff told the junta’s central conscription body on Monday that anyone evading the Conscription Law could face three years in prison.
Maung Maung Aye, vice chair of the body, told the chairs of region and state-level conscription bodies to make sure the target numbers of conscripts are drafted in the third batch.
Defense Minister Lieutenant General Tin Aung San, who chairs the body, admitted challenges in meeting the targets for the first two batches.
The regime plans to conscript around 5,000 people in each intake, bringing the total to 15,000 men.
The regime announced that 14 million of the country’s 54 million citizens are eligible for conscription, 26 percent of the population of 54 million.
Training for the first batch of conscripts started in April and the second on May 14. The conscription body has set the time frame for the third batch, said Tin Aung San.
Many men have left the country either legally or illegally to avoid conscription and thousands have taken shelter with anti-regime forces.
People’s Embrace, a group of military defectors, said 26,000 people have contacted the organization since the Conscription Law was announced in February and that 80 percent of them want to join the revolt against the regime. The group said it was arranging for them to join revolutionary organizations.
Earlier this month, the regime imposed a partial ban on men leaving the country, barring men aged between 23 and 32 from working abroad.
The recruitment drive has reportedly failed to boost the morale of junta soldiers, many of whom are exhausted after years of continuous fighting, as the regime continues to lose ground.
Cikha town in northern Chin State near the Indian border fell this week. The regime has also lost the garrison town of Buthidaung in Rakhine State to the Arakan Army while the Kachin Independence Army continues to seize junta positions in Waingmaw Township, Kachin State.
The regime said it would conscript unmarried women aged between 18 and 27 during the fifth intake. It is registering draft-age women in Ayeyarwady Region, requiring ward and village administration officials to collect the pictures of eligible women.
