TOKYO FILMFEST SHOWCASES MYANMAR CHILD SOLDIERS

As Myanmar's military continues to draw international censure for its February coup and subsequent suppression of civilian resistance, an entry in a short-film festival in Tokyo offers audiences a peek into another, less-touched-on aspect of the military's behavior -- the use it once made, and some critics believe it still does, of child soldiers, according to a Kyodo News exclusive.

Lo Chen-wen's 2019 film "In This Land We're Briefly Ghosts" is inspired by real-life events in 2013, telling the story of a 12-year-old girl and her older, mute brother who desert but are eventually caught and punished. The siblings are given the ultimate choice: kill the other to survive or die together.

I just want people to know that there are places in the world where children were treated as (being) easily disposable. Like they were treated as bullets," the Taiwan-born director, who is now based in New York, said in an online interview.

The 16-minute film opens with a scene of the siblings fleeing into the forest on the country's border with Thailand, where many deserters from the Myanmar military end up as undocumented immigrants.

Lo, 31, said there has not been much mainstream media coverage about child soldiers in Myanmar. "I wanted to focus on marginalized people, on less-known issues and try to bring awareness" about their situation, she said.

Her work is being shown at Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia 2021 currently underway in Tokyo, after screenings in Taiwan, Vancouver, and South Korea's Busan.

Lo first learned about the plight of child soldiers from a journalist friend who interviewed a former child soldier in Myanmar.

She eventually met the former child soldier who was 13 at the time he was kidnapped and sold to the Tatmadaw, Myanmar's national armed forces. She heard how he had been thrown into action against ethnic rebel insurgents without much training and how he had made numerous attempts at escape over 10 years until he finally fled to Thailand.

Lo said she was shocked to find that in Myanmar, it was not only rebel groups but the Myanmar military that was chiefly recruiting child soldiers.

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