Myanmar junta forces seen encouraging each other to commit rape in online video

In video clip circulating on pro-junta online propaganda channels since last week, uniformed men who appear to be soldiers or junta-trained militia members can be heard goading one another to rape women in a village in Magway Region’s Gangaw Township. As the men approach the village in the clip, which is just under four minutes long and recorded on a cell phone, one man says to his companions, “There are girls over there.”“[Expletive] where? Go... There are about 10 girls,” he continues, using crude, sexual slang in Burmese. The video clip first emerged last Wednesday on a pro-junta Telegram channel, accompanied by text that describes it as showing the junta troops “clearing” the area of local resistance groups with help from junta-trained and armed militias—known as “Pyu Saw Htee”—in northern Gangaw Township, Magway Region. Most of the men in the footage are wearing army uniforms with militia badges. Some have red scarves tied or draped around their necks. From the appearance of the buildings in the footage, local civilians said it was likely filmed near Shwe Bo village, some three miles north of Myauk Khin Yan, a village known as a stronghold of the stronghold of the Pyu Saw Htee in Gangaw Township. Myanmar Now has yet to confirm where the clip was recorded. Although the junta has only supplied carbines to militia members in the past, the men in the video clip are seen carrying weapons typically used by regular army soldiers, according to sources within the anti-junta armed resistance. Junta soldiers near Shwe Bo village, Gangaw Township. (Photo: Still image from video) On this basis, a local resistance group member surmised that the footage was not likely to have been from a previous year and was probably recorded after a resupply of weapons earlier this year. Myauk Khin Yan village, located on the Kalay-Gangaw road, is not only a known militia stronghold, but also has strategic importance for troops under the army’s Regional Operations Command headquarters in Kalay, Sagaing Region. It is one of more than ten villages known as militia strongholds along that road, according to local resistance sources. In February of this year, gruesome footage emerged on social media showing militia members and junta troops burning two resistance members alive. The victims—Phoe Tay and Tha Htaung—were members of the Yaw Defence Force who had been captured at the end of last year by soldiers and militia members based in Myauk Khin Yan. The militia members and troops based in Myauk Khin Yan and other, nearby Pyu Saw Htee strongholds have only managed to advance into the nearby villages of Shwe Bo and Thin Taw around five times since then, according to resistance sources. Most residents have fled Thin Taw, leaving it all but deserted after arson attacks by the army destroyed most of the village. The monastery is one of the few structures still standing. In the clip that spread on social media this week, locals identified a single-story building as a shelter in a cemetery on the northwest end of Shwe Bo, near the Kalay-Gangaw road. Junta forces have also destroyed more than two thirds of the structures in Shwe Bo, which was once a village of more than 400 houses. Most of the civilian residents, at risk of arson attacks and other threats from the militias and junta troops based nearby, have fled the village for safer areas. According to a People’s Defense Force (PDF) officer based in Taung Khin Yan—a village located just south of Shwe Bo and Myauk Khin Yan—the troops advancing from Myauk Khin Yan usually separate into two or three columns, later using Shwe Bo as a rallying point when they regroup. Although junta army columns advanced to nearby villages from Myauk Khin Yan in the second week of August, local resistance forces said the junta troops were unable to occupy and take over their base camps. The Myauk Khin Yan-based junta forces also clashed with resistance forces near Shwe Bo on August 18, local resistance groups said, incurring a number of casualties. One resistance fighter also died in the clash, they added. Junta soldiers in Sagaing Region in May 2023, obtained from a soldier's phone. In February of this year, a junta army column advanced from its base in Myauk Khin Yan to Shwe Bo, arresting and killing 10 local civilian men and taking 13 more, including women and children, as hostages. In late May, a column advanced into Shwe Bo again from Myauk Khin Yan, torturing and beheading a 35-year-old local man with a mental disorder. Junta troops are known to have committed rape and other forms of sexual violence at interrogation centres and during village raids, according to a report delivered by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to the organisation’s human rights council in February of 2023. Other video clips that have spread virally on social media in recent months showed junta troops burning down civilians’ houses in various parts of the country, especially in areas where the armed resistance maintains a strong presence.

Myanmar junta forces seen encouraging each other to commit rape in online video

The footage was evidently recorded in Shwe Bo village, Gangaw Township, near where another clip was filmed showing military-backed militia members burning two resistance members alive after capturing them last year

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