Myanmar Junta Tortures Women Political Prisoners, Denies

Women political prisoners in Myanmar face beatings with sticks, chains, and metal pipes. They are subjected to electric shocks, sexual violence, cigarette burns, prolonged stress positions, and weeks or months of solitary confinement by prison authorities.

More than 30,000 political prisoners have been detained since the military seized power in February 2021. About 6,600 women and 640 children are among them. Over 2,300 men and women have died in custody since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. A separate group, Myanmar Prison Witness, documented 290 deaths of political prisoners between February 1, 2021, and September 16, 2026, including 43 women political prisoners and their children.

Sexual humiliation and invasive abuse

Most women reported experiencing sexual humiliation or assault. This includes invasive body searches conducted with the intent to humiliate rather than to serve a legitimate security purpose. Women reported torture and ill-treatment during interrogations lasting months or as punishment.

Targeting of pregnant women and denial of care

Pregnant women are denied necessary prenatal, obstetric, and postnatal care. They face abuses that endanger their health, lives, and pregnancies. One activist, 26 years old and pregnant when arrested in 2024, was interrogated for over a month. Her husband said interrogators threatened to beat her stomach if she did not provide information about him and her colleagues in the opposition.

A woman arrested in 2021 when three months pregnant said her interrogators used electric shock and beat her, leaving her with chronic pain. She was held in a storage room with nine other pregnant inmates, where they slept on a concrete floor among used medical masks and gowns. Former detainees reported beatings, rape, squalid conditions, and dangerous denial of prenatal and obstetric care.

Medical neglect and preventable suffering

Former prisoners said prison authorities routinely block access to necessary medical care for serious chronic and acute conditions. Treatment is highly arbitrary. Patients sometimes face months-long waits, demands for bribes by prison guards, and must pay for medicine and treatment from outside.

One woman who spent three years in prison said that for disease, there is no medication, so you just have to endure it. Women said medical neglect is compounded by a near-total lack of specialized services for sexual and reproductive health. Minor issues unnecessarily become serious issues due to lack of medical care.

Widespread detention and deaths in custody

Human Rights Watch based its findings on interviews conducted in 2025 and 2026 with 17 former women political prisoners, three family members, and four lawyers and advocates. The former detainees, who were activists, journalists, healthcare workers, and aid workers at the time of arrest, had been held in 11 interrogation centers and prisons. Some have been detained since the 2021 coup.

They were often prosecuted under Section 505A of the Penal Code and the sweeping Counter-Terrorism Law. Several women said they were detained unlawfully as hostages for friends or relatives who had evaded arrest.

A former political prisoner said that their lives in prison are worth an A4 paper, referring to the notice families are required to sign when informed about a death in detention. Bodies are not returned to families. Human Rights Watch is unaware of any investigations or efforts to hold those responsible accountable. In some cases, families are not even informed.

Human Rights Watch called for the immediate and unconditional release of all women political prisoners and their children, including former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained for more than five years.