The regime is increasingly targeting civilians in a campaign of extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, sexual violence, and destruction of property against the ethnic Danu minority, according to a new report.
The report by the Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF) highlights a grave escalation of human rights abuses by the Myanmar military in southern Shan State’s Ywangan and surrounding areas over the last three years.
The abuses seem to have been prompted by the growing influence of Danu and other resistance groups in the region, says the report, which documents rights abuses in 14 villages in Ywangan and neighboring Thazi Township in Mandalay Region since mid-2022.
Junta soldiers, police, and junta-aligned Pyu Saw Htee militias are involved in what the report calls a campaign of “systematic oppression.”
Since late 2023, there has also been a significant rise in aerial bombardments and artillery strikes targeting villages in Ywangan.
In one case from May 2023 documented by the group, six junta soldiers gang-raped three women in Myet Khar Inn village in Ywangan, which forms part of the Danu Self-Administered Zone. The women were taking shelter in the forest after being displaced by fighting.
“Today, junta soldiers still peek and take pictures of young women bathing,” said Ying Leng Harn of the SHRF.
In late 2023, a 23-year-old woman who was assisting displaced people was arrested by the junta’s 55th Light Infantry Division and taken to Ywangan police station, where her breasts were lashed with a leather belt and a baton inserted into her vagina, according to a fellow detainee who was later released.
She was accused of funding People’s Defense Forces (PDF) and given 12 years in prison under the Anti-Terrorism Law.
Last December, the Kalaw-based division torched nearly 170 houses in Min Palaung village west of Ywangan in retaliation for attacks by the Danu resistance on junta positions.
Over the border in Thazi, regime troops torched some 210 houses between 2021 and 2024, stealing valuables before setting fire to them, the report says.
According to the SHRF, more than 300 Ywangan residents were detained by the regime between 2022 and 2024. Over 100 remain in detention, some already sentenced and some awaiting trial.
Three people have died in custody, one pregnant woman suffered a miscarriage in jail and was subsequently released, and two detained men have since gone missing.
Increased junta airstrikes and artillery attacks since November last year also inflicted civilian casualties, with three civilians killed in January.
More than 1,000 people have been displaced in Ywangan due to the junta’s attacks and receive barely any humanitarian assistance, Ying Leng Harn said.
Several anti-regime groups are active in the area—the Danu People’s Liberation Army, the Danu State National Defense Army, two Danu PDF groups, the Ywangan PDF, and the Gyobyu Urban Guerilla Force.
While Shan State is home to several ethnic armed organizations that have been battling for autonomy for decades, Ywangan had been peaceful until the 2021 coup, according to the SHRF.
