Human Rights Watch: Myanmar tortures, sexually abuses and denies medical care to women political prisoners

Human Rights Watch said in a report published Tuesday that Myanmar’s military authorities have subjected women political prisoners to torture, sexual violence and life-threatening denial of medical care since the 2021 coup, drawing on new interviews with former detainees and updated custody-death figures from monitoring groups.

The 42-page report, titled “Myanmar: Women Political Prisoners Tortured, Ill-treated,” says the abuses point to a gender-specific pattern inside Myanmar’s detention system, where women detainees described beatings, sexual humiliation, invasive body searches and severe barriers to treatment during pregnancy and after childbirth. The findings matter in part because they highlight risks not only to women prisoners, but also to children held with them.

“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, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

Human Rights Watch said its findings were based on interviews conducted in 2025 and 2026 with 17 former women political prisoners, three family members and four lawyers and advocates. The former detainees had been held in 11 interrogation centers and prisons, according to the group.

According to Human Rights Watch, former prisoners described beatings, electric shocks, prolonged stress positions, solitary confinement, retaliation for complaints, sexual assault and invasive searches. The group said women also reported squalid, overcrowded conditions, lack of menstrual supplies and serious obstacles to obtaining medical care, including for pregnant women and mothers with children in custody.

One former political prisoner quoted in the report said: “Our lives in prison are worth an A4 paper.”

Human Rights Watch said the scale of detention remains vast. Citing the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, or AAPP, a Myanmar monitoring group, it said more than 30,000 political prisoners have been detained since the military seized power on Feb. 1, 2021, including about 6,600 women and 640 children.

The report also points to rising concern over deaths in custody. Human Rights Watch, citing AAPP, said more than 2,300 men and women have died in custody since the coup. Separately, it cited Myanmar Prison Witness, another monitoring group, as documenting 290 deaths of political prisoners between Feb. 1, 2021, and Sept. 16, 2026, including 43 deaths of women political prisoners and their children. The figures come from different nongovernmental groups and may reflect different methodologies.

Among the cases cited, Human Rights Watch said a woman arrested in 2021 while three months pregnant reported that interrogators who knew she was pregnant used electric shock and beatings on her. The woman’s husband, quoted in the report, said: “They threatened her: ‘If you won’t tell us the information, we’ll hit your belly.’” After she later gave birth, the report said, chains were put back on her feet immediately after delivery.

Human Rights Watch also highlighted the July 2025 death of student activist Wutt Yee Aung in Yangon’s Insein prison. The group said she died after years without adequate medical treatment for head injuries caused by multiple beatings following her 2021 arrest.

The report said women were commonly prosecuted under laws used against critics of the junta, including Penal Code section 505A and the Counter-Terrorism Law. Several women told Human Rights Watch they were detained as hostages for relatives or associates who had evaded arrest.

Myanmar’s military overthrew the elected government in February 2021, triggering mass arrests of opponents, journalists, activists and civil servants, as well as a wider civil conflict. Human Rights Watch’s findings fit a broader pattern already documented by the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, a U.N. body that has previously reported systematic sexual and gender-based crimes in detention, including rape, forced nudity, invasive body searches and reproductive violence. Human Rights Watch also noted that Myanmar is party to international treaties including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Human Rights Watch called for the unconditional release of all women political prisoners and their children, including former civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi. It also urged governments to impose targeted sanctions on senior junta officials and press for humanitarian access to detainees.

No immediate multilateral response to the report was identified in the material released Tuesday.