The embassy said 400 numbered tickets are being issued daily to manage queues.
Yangon:
Young people lined up in front of the Thai embassy in Yangon on Friday seeking to leave Myanmar after the junta said it would force military service.
The military said over the weekend it would enforce a law allowing it to conscript all men aged 18-35 and women aged 18-27 to serve for at least two years in an effort to quell opposition to its 2021 coup.
Three years after seizing power from an elected civilian government, the junta faces widespread armed opposition and has recently suffered a series of stunning losses from ethnic armed alliances.
Since the People’s Liberation Army Service Act was announced last Saturday, the Thai embassy in Yangon has been overwhelmed by young men and women seeking visas to leave Myanmar.
An AFP reporter saw 1,000 to 2,000 people queuing on a street near the mission in central Yangon on Friday, up from fewer than 100 before Saturday’s announcement.
The embassy said 400 numbered tickets are being issued daily to manage queues.
Aung Phyo, a 20-year-old student, said he arrived at the embassy at 8pm on Thursday, slept in the car and started queuing around midnight.
“We had to wait for three hours and the police opened the security gate at around 3am and we had to run in front of the embassy to try to find a place to collect our tokens,” he told AFP. Fearing for his safety, he Use pseudonyms. Safety.
“After we got a token, people who didn’t get a token were still queuing up in front of the embassy hoping they would give away something extra.”
The law was enacted by the former military government in 2010 but has never been used, and it is unclear how it will be enforced.
There have been no details yet on how those drafted will serve, but many young men are not keen on waiting and finding out.
“I will travel to Bangkok on a tourist visa and hope to stay there for a while,” Aung Phyo said.
“I haven’t decided yet whether to work or study. I just want to escape the country.”
The junta says it is taking steps to arm pro-military militias – including the anti-coup YDF and longer-standing ethnic armed groups – as it battles opposition across the country.
Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said on Saturday that the military service system was needed “due to the situation that is happening in our country.”
The military’s crackdown on dissent has left more than 4,500 people dead and more than 26,000 arrested since the February 2021 coup, according to local monitoring groups.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
