"On March 28, 2018, a Yangon court sentenced a former child soldier, Aung Ko Htway, to two years in prison with hard labor for giving an interview to the media outlet Radio Free Asia in July 2017 about his abduction into the Myanmar Army at age 14, and subsequent harsh training experience. Abducted by a Myanmar[1] Army officer in 2005 from Yangon central railway station, Aung Ko Htway was sold at a military market in Mingaladon Township, enlisted in the military, and sent to a military training camp. In contrast to Aung Ko Htway?s sentencing, the military officer who abducted him has not been punished. As a joint statement by 154 civil society organizations in Myanmar calling for Aung Ko Htway?s release pointed out, it is his recruitment and inhumane treatment that is a crime, not his exercise of free speech in speaking out. Children in Myanmar continue to suffer from conflict-related violence and abuses, including systematic forced recruitment into the Myanmar Army and some ethnic armed organizations, arrest by the Myanmar Army on suspicion of association with unlawful organizations, and injury or death from landmines and shelling of civilian areas including churches and schools. Despite the seriousness of their needs, child victims are not given any support or rehabilitation by the Government, and the few who speak out are targeted with legal reprisals. At an early age, many children learn that the Myanmar Government cannot or will not protect them from the Myanmar Army, which continues to abuse children and other civilians with impunity. The judicial system is no more a source of protection or for enforcement of Myanmar?s legal obligations, as it continues to side with the Myanmar Army and Myanmar Government in cases against those who dare to speak out or seek justice..."