Human Rights Watch urges Myanmar to free women political prisoners after torture, abuse allegations

Women political prisoners in Myanmar have faced torture, sexual violence, unsanitary conditions, and life-threatening denials of medical care, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday, calling for their immediate release. Myanmar suffers a civil war, affecting most of the country, following the military seizure of power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. The New York-based rights group interviewed 17 former female political prisoners—including activists, journalists, health workers, and aid workers who were held in 11 interrogation centers and prisons — as well as three family members and four lawyers and advocates in 2025 and 2026. The women described beatings with sticks, chains, metal pipes, and slingshots, and said they were subjected to electric shocks, sexual violence, cigarette burns, prolonged stress positions, and weeks or months in solitary confinement, according to the report. HRW also cited the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) — a group that keeps detailed records of arrests and casualties perpetrated by the authorities — noting that nearly 6,600 women and 640 children have been detained for political reasons since the takeover. The rights group also said 43 women political prisoners and their children were among 290 political prisoners who died between 2021 and 2026, according to Myanmar Prison Witness, a watchdog group. “Women who have been detained as political prisoners in Myanmar paint a deeply disturbing picture of a prison system in which suffering and neglect are both deliberate and routine,” Bryony Lau, HRW’s deputy Asia director, said in the report. “The women face layers of injustice, from arbitrary arrest to torture and mistreatment in detention, to unrelenting fear and trauma following release.” The report said one woman who was arrested in 2021 when she was three months pregnant was beaten and subjected to electric shocks during interrogation, despite authorities knowing she was pregnant, leaving her with chronic pain. She was held in a storage room with nine other pregnant women, where they slept on a concrete floor among used medical masks and gowns, the report said. “There was no ultrasound, so there was no way to estimate the due date,” she told Human Rights Watch. “My water broke at midnight, but the [hospital] referral letter only arrived at 10 a.m. Chains were put back on my feet right after the delivery.” The group said about 125 women political prisoners were detained while pregnant or with their children, citing the Women’s Organization of Political Prisoners. The report said women prisoners had faced sexual humiliation or assault, including invasive body searches conducted in a manner and at a frequency that indicated an intent to humiliate rather than serving any legitimate security purpose. One former prisoner held in the notorious Insein prison in the northern part of Yangon, the country’s largest city, and Daik-U Prison in the lower-central Bago region, told HRW that guards coerced some women into sexual activity in exchange for medicine or other necessities, according to the report. In Wednesday’s report, Human Rights Watch called on Myanmar’s military regime to release all women political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and their children, and to end torture and other mistreatment in detention. The allegations could not be independently verified. A spokesperson for the military-backed government was not immediately available for comment on the report. Rights groups have documented allegations of torture and sexual violence in Myanmar detention facilities since the military takeover. In August last year, a U.N.-backed investigator said his team had 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 a one-year period between 2024 and 2025. AP