The Myanmar military junta subjects women political prisoners to torture, sexual violence, and life-threatening denial of medical care, Human Rights Watch said today.
Among the over 30,000 political prisoners detained since the junta's February 2021 coup are about 6,600 women and 640 children. Former prisoners and their families have reported beatings, rape, squalid conditions, and the dangerous and sometimes deadly denial of prenatal and obstetric medical care to pregnant women. The junta should urgently and unconditionally release all women political prisoners and their children, including the former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained for more than five years.
"Women who have been detained as political prisoners in Myanmar paint a deeply disturbing picture of a prison system in which suffering and neglect are both deliberate and routine," said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The women face layers of injustice, from arbitrary arrest to torture and mistreatment in detention, to unrelenting fear and trauma following release."
In 2025 and 2026, Human Rights Watch interviewed 17 former women political prisoners, 3 family members, and 4 lawyers and advocates. The former detainees-activists, journalists, healthcare workers, and aid workers at the time of their arrest-had been held in 11 interrogation centers and prisons, some since the 2021 coup.
The women said they were prosecuted under various criminal code provisions used against real or perceived critics of the junta. These include Penal Code section 505A, a vague and overbroad post-coup law to punish opposition and dissent, and the sweeping Counter-Terrorism Law. Several women said they were detained unlawfully as hostages for friends or relatives who had eluded arrest.
Women reported being tortured and ill-treated during interrogation, which could last months, or as punishment. Prison authorities beat them with sticks, chains, metal pipes, and slingshots, and subjected them to electric shock, sexual violence, cigarette burns, prolonged stress positions, and weeks or months in solitary confinement. Most said they had faced sexual humiliation or assault, including invasive body searches conducted in a manner and at a frequency that indicated an intent to humiliate more than any legitimate security purpose.
An activist, 26, who was pregnant when arrested in 2024, was interrogated for over a month. Her husband said, "They threatened her about the pregnancy, told her to tell them about me and her colleagues [in the opposition]. They threatened her: 'If you won't tell us the information, we'll hit your belly.'"
More than 2,300 men and women have died in custody since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Myanmar Prison Witness has documented 290 deaths of political prisoners between February 1, 2021, and September 16, 2026, including 43 deaths of women political prisoners and their children.
"Our lives in prison are worth an A4 paper," a former political prisoner said, referring to the notice families are required to sign when informed about a death in detention. The bodies are not returned to families, he said, and Human Rights Watch is unaware of any investigations or accountability. In some cases, the families are not even informed.
Former prisoners said that prison authorities consistently block access to necessary medical care for serious chronic and acute conditions. Treatment is highly arbitrary, requiring months-long waits, bribes to prison guards, and outside payments for medicine and care.
"When it comes to disease, there is no medication, so you just have to endure it," said a woman who spent three years in prison. "Minor issues unnecessarily become serious issues."
Women said that medical neglect is compounded by a near-total lack of specialized services to meet their sexual and reproductive healthcare needs. Pregnant women are denied access to necessary prenatal, obstetric, and postnatal care, and may face abuses that could endanger their health, lives, and pregnancy.
A woman arrested in 2021 when three months' pregnant said her interrogators, who knew she was pregnant, used electric shock and beat her, leaving her with chronic pain. She was held in a storage room with nine other pregnant inmates, where they slept on a concrete floor among used medical masks and gowns.
"There was no ultrasound so there was no way to estimate the due date," she said. "My water broke at midnight, but the [hospital] referral letter only arrived at 10 a.m.… Chains were put back on my feet right after the delivery."
Some women are left to give birth in their cells due to the lack of emergency care, which former prisoners said led to stillbirths and deaths of mothers and infants.
Women also described overcrowding and squalid conditions that placed their lives and health at risk. After release, a number of these women reported experiencing depression, hypervigilance, isolation, and suicidal thoughts.
Myanmar is party to several core international human rights treaties that address treatment of people in custody, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; the Convention on the Rights of the Child; and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Under treaty and customary international law, Myanmar authorities have a duty of care for people in prisons, including an obligation to protect their rights to life, health, safety, dignity, and security. Moreover, no one may be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules) state that the "provision of health care for prisoners is a State responsibility," with necessary health care to be provided free. The Rules call for all prisons to ensure prompt access to medical attention and accommodation for prenatal and postnatal care and treatment, including arrangements for giving birth in a hospital.
The UN Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (the Bangkok Rules) establish additional protections for women prisoners, including gender-specific healthcare services at least equivalent to those available in the community, and safeguards for mothers and children.
Concerned governments should impose targeted economic and travel sanctions on senior junta officials to press the junta to unconditionally release all arbitrarily detained and imprisoned people, including Aung San Suu Kyi; immediately end torture and other ill-treatment in custody; and grant impartial international humanitarian agencies full access to everyone in custody. Donors should support local groups providing legal, medical, psychosocial, and vocational assistance to current and former women political prisoners, and increase resettlement opportunities for particularly vulnerable people.
"Governments should use every opportunity to press the junta to release all political prisoners, including detained women," Lau said. "Focusing greater attention on the plight of detained women will show the junta that it can't hide its horrific treatment behind prison walls, and the thousands of women unjustly detained that they haven't been forgotten."
