Sexual and gender-based violence in Myanmar and the gendered impact of its ethnic conflicts in English the woman’s house and beat her mother. The mother was subsequently made to perform forced labour for the Tatmadaw.316 139. A teacher in Bhamo Township in Kachin State said that she was abducted in 2012 on her way to school and taken to a military base for forced labour. One night a soldier took her to the tent of a senior Tatmadaw officer. When she fought this officer’s attempt to rape her, he burned her arms with cigarettes, hit her with the butt of his rifle, cut her neck and arms with a knife, and punched her so hard that she lost consciousness. She regained consciousness while he was raping her. She was again knocked unconscious by the perpetrator. The senior officer kept the woman in his tent for five to seven days and repeatedly raped her vaginally, anally and orally. She said: “The General told me that, if I did not let myself be raped, he would get the other soldiers to rape me as well. He raped me every night for about 5 to 7 days.”317 140. After being raped, she was not allowed to bathe and had to sleep with other female captives on the ground with no blanket. She observed other girls kept in similar conditions by soldiers at the base. She told the Mission that three or four girls were repeatedly raped while she was there.318 141. Similarly, in 2012 a Lisu survivor reported that 12 Tatmadaw soldiers came to her house in Myitkyina Township, Kachin State, and threatened to take her mother away if the daughter did not go with them. She spent six to seven months in forced labour in a military camp near her village. On one occasion, she was raped by a senior officer with another soldier watching. On another night, soldiers told her to drink juice that caused her to lose consciousness. She woke up without underwear next to a sleeping soldier, with pain in her back, anus, vagina and thighs. A week later, she was taken to the same senior officer but escaped before he raped her again.319 142. A Kachin teacher reported that Tatmadaw soldiers abducted her at lunch time on 11 February 2014 from the school where she taught in a church compound in Bhamo Township, Kachin State. The soldiers took her to an old house and forced her to cook and clean for them. They confined her in a locked dark room where two other women were also held captive. The women were not allowed to speak to each other and obliged to sleep directly on the floor. While she was asleep, a soldier came to the room and sexually assaulted her, touching her breast and thighs. He was lying on top of her and attempted to rape her but she fought him until she was hit with a sharp object on the head. She fainted and woke up a few hours later in an empty room. She managed to escape on the morning of 12 February 2014.320 The Mission reasonably concludes that this case amounts to either sexual slavery or attempted sexual slavery. 143. These and other consistent accounts indicate that sexual slavery is not a rare occurrence, even though information is limited. 321 Similar to other sexual and gender-based violence, sexual slavery is likely to be under-reported due to survivors’ fear of stigmatization and ostracism arising from disclosing such information. Additionally, the close monitoring and restricted movement of sexual slavery victims and the physical injuries caused by the frequency and severity of abuse lowers the rate of successful escapes and thus the availability of information. Further, victims confined to officers’ private 316 317 318 319 320 321 34 PI-068. PI-067. PI-067. PI-068. PI-160. Sexual slavery is also a prohibited act to parties of the National Ceasefire Agreement of 2015, at Section 9 m), inferring its prevalence. A/HRC/32/18, para. 60; S/2018/250, paras. 57-58; Kachin Women’s Association Thailand, The Burmese Army Must Immediately Release Four Women Held as Sex Slaves Near Kachin-China Border(4 November 2011); Testimony by S Hkawng Naw of the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand to the US Congress, 28 February 2013 available at https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/sites/humanrightscommission.house.gov/files/documents/S %20Hkawng%20Naw%20testimony%20TLHRC_0.pdf; Human Rights Watch, “Untold Miseries” Wartime Abuses and Forced Displacement in Burma’s Kachin State (20 March 2012).