As many Myanmar people flee their country to evade its regime’s mandatory military service law, neighboring Thailand has warned that Myanmar nationals entering illegally would face legal action.
The Myanmar junta recently activated the People’s Military Service Law as the army struggles to contain an anti-junta insurgency. The move was met with a public outcry as military officials announced that 14 million of the country’s young people are eligible for conscription. That amounts to 26 percent of the country’s population of 54 million.
Since the announcement of the enforcement of the law, the number of Myanmar citizens applying for visas to enter Thailand has increased sharply.
“They are welcome if they enter the country legally. But if they sneak into the country illegally, legal action will be taken against them. I already discussed the matter with security agencies,” Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said.
The prime minister also tried to allay concerns that Myanmar immigrants would take jobs away from local people, stressing that one of the reasons Myanmar citizens are currently fleeing to Thailand is to avoid mandatory military service, the Bangkok Post reported.
He also said Thailand’s unemployment rate is currently lower than 1 percent and that it still needs many more laborers from neighboring countries, though they must follow proper procedures to work in the country.
Thailand shares a more than 2,400-km-long border with Myanmar and has a long history of sheltering people displaced by fighting between Myanmar’s military and ethnic armed groups on the border. There are also 2.1 million migrant workers from Myanmar registered to work in Thailand as of January 2024.
Since the Myanmar junta’s military coup in 2021, Bangkok has seen new arrivals: political activists evading arrest by the the regime, as well as well-to-do families who left Myanmar for greener pastures.
There have been reports of people who entered Thailand illegally via the border being arrested.
Since the announcement of the conscription law, the Thai Embassy in Yangon has been coping with an influx of visa applicants. It recently announced that it would only accept 400 applications per day, effective from last Thursday.
Meanwhile, the number of people entering Thailand via its border with Myanmar’s southern Shan State is on the rise. Local people said this was due to the junta’s national conscription law as well as mandatory military service requirements imposed by some local ethnic armed groups active in the state.
