"Junta Leans on Labor Agencies to Bring Conscripts Home,"

The military regime has tasked overseas employment agencies with bringing Myanmar migrant workers back home when they are called up for mandatory military service.

A new provision added by the junta in May to the standard contract between employment agencies and workers requires the recruiters to “do what is necessary” if a worker is called up while working abroad.

One recruiter said: “Previously, the regime said employment agencies must ‘assist’ workers in remitting their salaries back to families through the official banking system, but now they say we must take responsibility for that. We have also been assigned to bring back potential conscripts. Surely that’s not our problem.”

The regime will not bring migrant workers back during two-year contract, but employment agencies must make sure they come back once the contract expires if they are called up, he said...

The conscription law has caused a mass exodus of young people to foreign countries, mostly by illegally crossing the border, and as a result young undocumented migrant workers are losing their labor rights...