Sexual violence continues in Shan State

^{By Hseng Khio Fah
27 June 2008}

A group of 6 soldiers led by Lt Tat Kyaw from Kunhing based Infantry Battalion 246, Company # 3, on 21 June abducted a 24 year old girl named Nang Nu on her way home at around 14:30 and raped her near Keng Lom where the Burma Army and the SSA fought last week. The soldiers were on duty to provide security for the military trucks coming from Taunggyi to Mongpiang, said the source.

“She was raped while she was returning from selling her bamboo buds at the market of Kali,” a villager told a Shan Herald reporter. “She arrived home with an unhappy face and told her parents how she was perpetrated by the Burmese soldiers. But the family dared not open the case because there was no witness. The village headman was also afraid to charge the soldiers for the crime.”

Nang Nu is looking after of her old father Long Pha Heing and her leper mother with a daily income from selling vegetables. Due to her mother’s disease, the family lives 1 mile far from Naloe village, Kali tract.

Similar incidents happened in Kunhing township.

On 24 May, a gang of Burmese soldiers who patrolling around Kunhing  area took a 21 year old girl who wishes to be unnamed coming back from harvesting hillside cultivation to Yala lake, north of Kunhing at 11:30 and raped her, according to the border sources.

“She returned back home with torn dirty clothes at around 16:00. She just sat and cried every day since she was raped. We couldn’t ask her anything. Now, she just acts like she’s gone out of her mind,” said her close relative.

“They [soldiers] threatened her with their guns and dragged her to the lake,” said a 10 year old boy eye witness.

The family went to tell the village headman to complain to the officials in the town but nothing came out of it. The victim lives in Nammawn village, north of Kunhing.