Soldiers from the Burma Army (BA) gang-raped a 27-year-old mother from a village in Chin State’s Tedim Township and made the woman’s husband watch them before raping her pregnant sister-in-law.
According to the Chinland Defence Force (CDF) for Kalay, Kabaw and Gangaw, the soldiers from Battalion 22 raped the woman in her home in Aklui on 11 November. She had given birth only a month and a half ago.
“Three soldiers entered her house around 11pm. They pointed a gun at her husband’s head and beat him on the head before making him crawl into the bathroom. After that, the soldiers raped her one by one. The victim herself came to us to report the gang rape,” CDF told Khonumthung News. An hour later, two of the soldiers came back and raped the woman again and stole her gold jewellery.
The woman, who’s suffering from trauma, is in hiding. “She’s afraid to talk to others about what happened to her, including her parents, and doesn’t want anyone else to know. The woman’s husband is worried about her,” the CDF source said.
On the same night, soldiers raped her sister-in-law, who’s seven months pregnant, and mutilated the woman’s genitals in the presence of children, according to Latsinu Women Agency. The military also stole from 20 households in the village.
Almost everyone from Aklui, which is about 25 miles from Tedim town on the road to Kalay, have fled. The column of BA has already left the village and is now stationed in Thaing Ngune village.
According to a statement from the local CDF chapter, the gang rape has offended the Chin people, who vowed retaliation against the junta’s forces.
Latsinu Women Agency, in a statement on its Facebook group, described the gang rapes in Tedim as “not a new strategy but a regular tactic of the Myanmar military to instill fear in the civilian population” during yet another attack on civilians that’s led to the displacement of more than 40,000 people from Chin State.
“The two wartime rape cases in Tedim illustrate the Myanmar military’s use of rape as weapon of war and a legacy of its toxic patriarchal structure.”