Sexual and gender-based violence in Myanmar and the gendered impact of its ethnic conflicts in English in northern Shan and Kachin States. 262 These operations were frequently accompanied by sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls. 116. In July 2011, in Kutkai Township, Shan State, the Tatmadaw was fighting the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).263 According to one survivor, Tatmadaw soldiers approached a mixed Kokang and Ta’ang village searching for TNLA members. An ethnic Kokang woman told the Mission that Tatmadaw soldiers abducted her and her mother from her farm and raped her in a hut next to a military base in the forest. Two Tatmadaw soldiers stood guard while another higher ranking soldier ripped off her clothes and raped her. During the abduction and rape, the survivor was accused of supporting TNLA soldiers. The Tatmadaw soldiers asked “Why did you pass a message to the TNLA?”264 117. One female survivor described a ground raid in early 2012 in Lashio Township, Shan State, near where the KIA and Tatmadaw were fighting. Tatmadaw soldiers rounded up men in the centre of a Kachin village to question them on the location of KIA members and searched houses. A group of soldiers entered her house, killed her parents and set their home on fire. A higher ranking soldier took her outside the house where he raped her vaginally and anally. She said: “He inserted a banana leaf in my mouth to make me stop screaming. I heard, “If you don’t keep quiet, I will shoot you with my gun”.265 118. More recently, from June 2017 to April 2018 in Tanai Township, Kachin, the Tatmadaw and the KIA were engaged in a series of clashes. The Mission’s 2018 reported the Tatmadaw conducting indiscriminate attacks, including by airstrikes, and committing extrajudicial killings, torture and rape of civilians, among other violations.266 Clashes began in June 2017 but fighting intensified in November 2017, reaching a peak in January 2018. The Tatmadaw attacked several mining operations in KIO/KIA areas of control with an apparent purpose of taking control of economic and natural resources.267 During various Tanai offensives, Tatmadaw soldiers subjected women to rape, gang rape, attempted rape, forced nudity and sexual humiliation.268 119. The presence of the Northern Command in the area, its participation in the Tanai operations, and other indicators, draw the Mission to infer that high ranking officials and other Northern Command soldiers should be investigated for this sexual violence.269 One witness saw 20 soldiers gang raping two naked Kachin girls aged approximately 15 to 16 years old in the jungle near a mining area in Tanai Township in December 2017. The witness ran from the scene in fear and later learned that villagers had found the dead bodies of the two girls.270 120. On 20 February 2018, one Kachin woman reported being abducted by five soldiers near Nam Byu village in the mining area in Tanai Township, and being forced to walk for two hours into the forest to meet a more senior officer. When she refused to take off her clothes, three soldiers forcibly undressed her while two soldiers stood guard. The senior officer raped her while insulting her, telling the other officers, “I will take her first and then you can have her” and telling the victim, “I will fuck you to death”.271 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 A/HRC/39/CRP.2, para. 122. PI-023, PI-066, QI-084. PI-066. PI-117. A/HRC/39/CRP.2, para. 307-315. PI-043, PI-049, PI-054; A/HRC/39/CRP.2, para. 307-315; Primarily gold and amber but also jade, copper and ruby mines. The Irrawaddy, “KIA Raids Tatmadaw Base, Claims to Detain More than a Dozen Troops” (9 April 2018); Myanmar Times, “Over 2000 Kachin villagers flee KIA-military battles” (23 April 2018). PI-063, PI-069, PI-146, GI-006. GI-006, GI-010, PI-069, QM-018, V-018; The Irrawaddy, “Regional Military Commanders Reshuffled” (24 April 2018). PI-069. PI-069; Myanmar Times, “Tatmadaw wants KIA to dismantle camps in Tanai” (9 February 2018). 29