A few days ago, the Ministry of National Defense issued a statement saying that in recent years, in the villages of Paben Town, because the KNLA of the Karen National Army is recruiting soldiers and arresting men, young people have fled one after another. According to preliminary military statistics, more than 120 local villagers have fled to the Laibei town area to take refuge.
Since 16 May, Knla armed forces of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), a subordinate of the Karen National Union Knu, have been forcibly conscripted into the villages of Gannai, Baoke and Kyaukgwe in the Pabeng Township District. Brigadier General Zuo Mintong, a spokesman for the military's True Information Propaganda Group, said that armed forced conscription not only caused panic among villagers, but also disturbed the calm of local villages. The Karen National Liberation Army's forced conscription has violated the NCA ceasefire agreement regulations. The military will take legal steps to protest the actions of the armed forces.
Accused of forced conscription is the Karen National Liberation Army (5) battalion, which regularly clashes between the 7 KNU battalions and military forces. The village chief of Kamuma village in Papen Town said that whether the Karen National Liberation Army had not seen the conscription with his own eyes, but had heard others mention it. Conscription is illegal according to laws and regulations, and our villages are not armed to recruit soldiers.
Earlier, the Karen National Union Knu had issued a post accusing the military, and Knu said in a statement that the military had doubled its military strength to the armed jurisdiction of Papen County. In addition, the military has added heavy weapons near the armed jurisdiction. The KNU believes that military action has hurt the friendship between the two sides and made peace work more difficult.