A 29-year-old Burmese woman who was held as a political prisoner. The UN has identified ‘systematic’ sexual and gender-based crimes in Myanmar’s prisons. Photograph: Fortify Rights
Tortured, humiliated and killed: the women who disappear into Myanmar’s prisons
The military junta has detained thousands of political prisoners since the 2021 coup, and a pattern of gender-based abuses is becoming clear
In August 2021, news spread across a Myanmar protesters’ network that Thazin*, an activist and former university student, had been killed. The protest she attended that summer in Mandalay had been broken up by soldiers shooting and driving cars into the crowds.
Most of the demonstrators were able to jump on to their motorcycles and flee. Thazin was not among them, and word spread that a young woman had been seen shot dead.
Her fellow protesters believed it was Thazin who had been killed, but she had actually been detained by police, who injured her when they rammed their car into her bike.
After her arrest, she was taken to a police station in Mandalay. There, she alleges, she was “tortured, slapped and kicked”, and her hips beaten to the point of needing stitches. During the interrogation, she was undressed to her underwear and touched inappropriately by a male officer. That night, left with hands and feet cuffed in the hallway outside a men’s prison ward, she did not sleep.
After her initial ordeal, Thazin disappeared for three years into Myanmar’s prisons, in which the UN has identified significant evidence of “systematic torture, killing and other serious abuses” alongside the “systematic commission of sexual and gender-based crimes”.
She became one of more than 30,000 Burmese activists, protesters, journalists and anti-junta militia members held as political prisoners in the five years since the military coup. They include more than 6,400 women, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
Serving her sentence in Mandalay central prison and Myingyan prison, Thazin says she experienced psychological, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of prison staff, including invasive strip-searches and beatings.
In her first year in prison, other female political prisoners in her ward were allegedly secretly filmed in the showers by male prison staff, with a lawyer telling Thazin that the footage was being used to blackmail family members.
A report published by AAPP also said women had been subjected to or witnessed physical torture and sexual abuse, including invasive strip-searches and “sexual humiliation and coercion based on information gathered through CCTV cameras”.
A 33-year-old former political prisoner is interviewed by Fortify Rights. The group says the women report sexual, physical and verbal abuse in prisons. Photograph: Courtesy of Fortify Rights
The report adds that male prison staff physically abused female political prisoners with metal rods, stun guns and sling shots.
Since late 2025, the non-profit organisation Fortify Rights has interviewed 10 former prisoners as part of its work researching the treatment of female political prisoners in Myanmar. According to Chit Seng, senior human rights specialist at Fortify Rights, the women report sexual, physical and verbal abuse, including threats of rape and beatings.
“None of these cases are isolated incidents. There is always a pattern in place, which suggests that sexual violence is being used as a tool of intimidation, from arrest to interrogation and detention. This is happening on every layer and in every room,” Chit Seng says.
“When it comes to women, [the authorities] will use anything to control and punish, to ensure that people are compliant.”
Another former political prisoner and nurse, who was held in Insein and then Tharyarwaddy prison, says she experienced similar psychological and physical abuse. After providing medical care to two injured protesters in Yangon in 2022, Ma Khaing* was arrested and given a three-year sentence.
In Insein prison, Ma Khaing “suffered from psychological trauma” after being interrogated extensively by prison staff and surveilled by CCTV cameras in the women’s ward. She said other female political prisoners described being stripped of their clothes and having plastic melted on to their genital area during interrogations.
A woman is comforted after her release from Insein prison in Yangon. More than 6,400 women have been detained by the junta since the 2021 coup. Photograph: Sopa/LightRocket/Getty
AAPP’s research documents 40 female political prisoners who have reportedly died in prisons, police stations and interrogation centres as a result of torture. Some were as young as 22 when they died because of alleged medical neglect and the severity of their injuries.
They include Wutyi Aung, a member of Dagon University students’ union, who was arrested with five other students in 2021. After being sentenced to seven years in prison, she allegedly sustained brain injuries while being tortured during her interrogation.
Wutyi Aung’s health deteriorated until she suffered a cardiac arrest and seizures. She died while being taken to hospital in July 2025.
The junta-backed Union and Solidarity party won the January 2026 elections in Myanmar, described as a “sham” by human rights observers, and a general, Min Aung Hlaing, was appointed president.
Shortly afterwards, about 4,000 political prisoners were freed under an amnesty, and the government announced that Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s imprisoned former leader, would have her sentence reduced and be moved to house arrest.
A Myanmar refugee in Thailand at a rally in Bangkok calling for the release of political prisoners detained in her homeland. Photograph: Jack Taylor/AFP/Getty
However, an Amnesty International researcher, Joe Freeman, says those moves were just the regime trying to manage its reputation rather than true transformation. “Nothing has really changed,” he says. “The junta is trying to emerge as a real civilian political force, but it’s the same people in charge.”
According to AAPP’s estimates, 22,064 pro-democracy activists and civilians were still being held in prison last month.
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Hundreds of women who were political prisoners now live in exile in Thailand, including Yu Mi San, who fled Myanmar in 2023 after her release from Maubin prison, where she was held for 18 months for leading protests. She says she was interrogated for 13 hours, suffered a heart attack in detention and was subject to sexual harassment and medical neglect.
She has since founded the Justice Network for Political Prisoners, which provides support to those still in prison and women struggling to recover from their detention. “This is a critical time to document and support political prisoners,” Yu Mi San says.
Thazin and Ma Khaing both fled from Myanmar across the border to Thailand in 2024 and 2025 respectively and now document abuses of other political prisoners for AAPP. “Even though the parliament has changed, it’s a joke for me,” Thazin says. “They are doing [some prisoner releases] because of international pressure, but I don’t trust them.”
Although they are no longer in Myanmar, Ma Khaing and Thazin say they “continue to hear the voices of the women [they] left in prison”.
* Names have been changed to protect identities
