Although this sergeant was asked by a major to take me back home, he took me instead to a military market in Mingaladon and sold me for 100,000 kyats (U.S. $72) to another soldier.
We were treated like animals, trapped in an army hall. There were about 100 boys in a 50-by-50-foot room with no bathroom. If we needed to leave the hall to use the bathroom, we’d have to go out without any clothes because they were worried that we’d run away.
The army camps are worse than jails, I was entrapped and saw no one, including any family members.
I was able to go to a school for soldiers, but we were not taught. We couldn’t study. We had to work on corn and sugarcane farms. When we got back from the farms, there was no food left for us, so we ran away.
I told the investigator we didn’t kill him, but we were not freed. We were in a prison cell for seven months with shackles on our hands and feet and fed rice mixed with sand.
I met a soldier named Tun Tun when I was in jail. Once, while we were on duty as patrol guards, he said that he would take the gun he had and [escape] to go underground into a jungle. He received a death sentence just because of these words. He is still in Mandalay’s Obo Prison.
Copyright © 1998-2016, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.
