Latest reports of the Burmese Army’s four-cut campaign revealed that a Shan woman from Shan State South’s Laikha township was gang-raped in front of her husband, by personnel of the Burmese Army, which has been waging a four-cut campaign since late July.
The couple has been identified as Sai Awta (23) and his wife Nang Noom (20) (not their real names), from the 31 household Wan Nawngpoke village, Tarkmawk village tract, Laikha Township, a source said.
The incident occurred only half a mile south of the village on August 2, at 5 pm, when three privates led by Sergeant Tin Aye from Mongkeung-based Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) #514, was on patrol and found the couple, while they were working on their farm. The group detained them after accusing them of being members of the SSA-South.
Some soldiers separated Sai Awta from his wife, tied him with a rope to a post of the hut and beat him up, while others raped his wife in front of him by turn, including the Sergeant until midnight. After that, the couple was warned not to spread the news, said Sai Awta’s friend, who declined to be named.
“They [soldiers] threatened them and told them not to tell anybody; otherwise both of them would be killed,” he said.
On that day, a 25 member patrol from the battalion, together with 14 men of the pro-junta Mongzeun militia group (formally Brigade 758 of the Shan State Army (SSA) ‘South’ that surrendered in July 2006) arrived at the village.
It was led by Lt Myint Than and the militia group was led by Sai Yoong, whose leader Mongzeun was killed in an attack by the SSA on 25 May.
“Villagers were given a deadline to leave their houses, if they did not all houses would be burnt down,” a local source said.
A clash between LIB#515 and SSA fighters on 15 July in Laikha Township led hundreds of villagers in Laikha, Kehsi and Mongkeung townships to suffer several human rights violations.
“License to Rape,” a report by the Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN), which was published in 2002, detailing 173 incidents of rape and involving 625 women and girls, had shaken the international community.
