Sexual and gender-based violence in Myanmar and the gendered impact of its ethnic conflicts in English were sexually assaulted and verbally abused, but were able to escape that night after the soldiers said the women would have to have sex with them.307 134. Also in 2011, an ethnic Shan man who the Tatmadaw placed into forced labour in Kunhing Township, Shan State, witnessed three Tatmadaw soldiers force a husband to work as a porter while they took his wife to the forest and raped her. 308 135. On 16 June 2016, Tatmadaw soldiers arrived in a Lisu home in Myitkyina Township, Kachin State, and shouted, “there are jobs women need to do”. They took a woman to their military base for forced labour, along with three other Lisu women. For approximately two weeks, the women were sexually assaulted and harassed by the soldiers while performing chores such as cleaning and cooking. She told the Mission the soldiers would “touch me on my breast, thighs, buttocks and when they were drunk they would put their hands inside my shirt”. The survivor also told the Mission the soldiers attempted to rape her and the other women on the base but an older Ruwang woman intervened. She said they were beaten each time they resisted rape.309 136. The Tatmadaw have used mining areas as staging grounds for abductions, forced labour, sexual violence and murder. The nature of these violations suggests that civilians, in particular women, living and working in mining areas are at a particularly heighted risk of experiencing sexual violence by the Tatmadaw. 310 For example, in November 2016, the Tatmadaw detained a woman for forced labour, and later abducted her and her infant son into the forest to rape her in the Namyang amber mining area in Kachin State.311 She told the Mission: “They did something very bad to me. They harassed me. They slapped me. They threw my son back to me after they were finished.” After she was raped by one Tatmadaw soldier, the other said it was his turn. She said, “I think he did not finish me off because my son was crying, there are also other tents in the mining area… maybe because of the noise he did not rape me too.”312 137. A Shan man told the Mission that in February 2018 in Mongkaung Township, Shan State, the Tatmadaw and the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S) were fighting near his village when the Tatmadaw forced him to porter heavy material for a period of 15 days. He reported that ethnic Shan women were also taken for portering and had to walk separately in front of the men. Tatmadaw soldiers were insulting them and sexually assaulting the women. Five Tatmadaw soldiers took two women into the forest to gang rape them. The witness later found their bodies in the jungle, naked with blood on their chests and in between their legs. A rope was around their necks. After this incident, another Shan woman forced to porter with the same group confided in the witness that she had been gang raped by ten Tatmadaw soldiers at the river where she went to bathe.313 (vi) Sexual slavery 138. The Mission received three credible accounts from survivors 314 and other accounts from secondary sources315 relating to sexual slavery in northern Myanmar, in areas where the Tatmadaw was actively fighting the KIA. The sexual slavery occurred when Tatmadaw soldiers abducted and deprived women of their liberty as forced labourers on military bases. The women were confined in fear and threatened with retaliation if they escaped. In one case, in retaliation for her escape after several months of captivity, the Tatmadaw destroyed 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 PI-023. PI-083. PI-143. A/HRC/42/CRP.3, para. 101. PI-146. PI-146, A/HRC/42/CRP.3, para. 92. PI-155. PI-067, PI-068, PI-160. PI-025, PI-029. 33