UN-backed investigators allege torture and sex crimes in Myanmar
detention facilities
[August 12, 2025]
GENEVA (AP) — A U.N.-backed investigator says his team has turned
up significant evidence of “systemic torture” in Myanmar's detention
centers, including electric shocks, strangulations, gang rape and
burning of sexual body parts over the last year.
Nicholas Koumjian was speaking as the international independent team he
heads released its latest annual report on Tuesday, focusing on a
one-year period running through June 30. |
In this Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2017, photo, F, 22, who says she was raped
by members of Myanmar's armed forces in June and again in September, is
photographed in her tent in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. (AP
Photo/Wong Maye-E, file) |
|
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the army seized power from the
elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021,
triggering a civil war. After peaceful demonstrations were put
down with lethal force, many opponents of military rule took up
arms, and large parts of the country are now embroiled in
conflict.
The team said it has made advances in identifying security
personnel involved in operations at the detention facilities and
“perpetrators who have summarily executed captured combatants or
civilians accused of being informers.” Perpetrators included
security forces, affiliated militias and opposition armed
groups, it said.
The report “details the documented torture in Myanmar’s
detention facilities which includes beatings, electric shocks,
strangulations, gang rape, burning of sexual body parts and
other forms of sexual violence,” a summary of its findings said.
“Our report highlights a continued increase in the frequency and
brutality of atrocities committed in Myanmar,” Koumjian said.
“We are working towards the day when the perpetrators will have
to answer for their actions in a court of law.”
“We have uncovered significant evidence, including eyewitness
testimony, showing systematic torture in Myanmar detention
facilities,” he said.
His team has opened new investigations into atrocities committed
against communities in Rakhine state as the military and the
opposition force known as the Arakan Army battle for control of
the territory.
More than 700,000 people from the Rohingya minority fled to
neighboring Bangladesh in 2017 to escape persecution in Myanmar.
About 70,000 others crossed the border last year when the Arakan
Army effectively took over Rakhine.
The Independent Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar has been
working since 2018 under a mandate from the U.N.-backed Human
Rights Council to help document rights abuses and violations in
the country.
It has shared evidence with authorities looking into cases
involving the Rohingya at the International Criminal Court and
the U.N.'s International Court of Justice.
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