UN-backed investigators allege torture and sex crimes in Myanmar detention facilities

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.

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.