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EDITORIAL
By bravely writing about his therapy by the hands of the army, Frontier reporter Ye Mon has uncovered its institutional barbarism and hopefully inspired different survivors to inform their story.
It’s exhausting to think about the braveness required to return ahead and share a private story of sexual assault. It means confronting the horrors of what occurred; to relive the expertise, and to visualise the faces, the individuals and the sounds within the place the place it occurred. It additionally means telling everybody in your life, from household and family members to finish strangers, that one thing horrible occurred to you, and bracing for the doable fallout.
Final week, Frontier reporter Ko Ye Mon confronted a profound trauma, writing a narrative about his expertise of being detained at Yangon Worldwide Airport, then taken to an interrogation centre the place he was brutally overwhelmed and raped by safety forces.
It’s a devastating learn. Frontier recognises how troublesome it’s to place a reputation to a narrative like this. We’re happy with Ye Mon and proceed to assist him.
Judging by the responses Frontier has seen and obtained, a lot of our readers have been equally moved by the story. As one Twitter consumer stated, “That is what a hero appears like.” Many others spoke of his bravery and thanked him for coming ahead. One other Twitter consumer stated, “I hope his story helps others and himself heal.”
Ye Mon finally made it out of Myanmar together with his household, and he has entry to ongoing medical and psychological assist. Many of the junta’s victims of torture and sexual assault shouldn’t have the identical stage of care. Quite a few media tales present the continued use of rape by the army as a weapon of their struggle in opposition to democracy in Myanmar. However there have been few if any detailed accounts printed within the first particular person, with out a pseudonym.
Frontier subsequently hopes that Ye Mon’s uncommon testimony will encourage others who can safely come ahead and inform their tales to take action. The stories to this point are seemingly simply the tip of the iceberg. A former soldier admitted to the BBC earlier this 12 months that his superior officer handed over a gaggle of younger girls to be raped, telling his subordinates to “do as you would like”. Min Aung Hlaing’s troops are clearly appearing not simply with impunity in relation to inflicting sexual violence, however with specific approval.
The Tatmadaw has been accused of rape in ethnic areas for many years, and the tempo had not slowed within the years earlier than the coup. Most infamously, throughout the 2017 Rohingya disaster, hundreds of girls and women have been allegedly raped. Whereas underreported, Rohingya males and boys have been additionally subjected to systematic sexual violence. In trying to crush the nationwide opposition to final 12 months’s coup, the army has turned its brutal strategies on society at giant. As Ye Mon wrote, “The troopers see the individuals as their enemies and inflict sexual violence as a type of punishment.”
The army doesn’t take kindly to survivors telling their tales, although. This was clear when safety forces introduced Ye Mon with a “contract” for his launch, which required him to remain silent in regards to the abuse he had suffered.
Ye Mon has been a journalist since 2011, reporting for the Myanmar Instances and DVB earlier than becoming a member of Frontier in 2018. He wrote a lot of our cowl tales and earned a repute for taking over taboo topics, together with one other private story in regards to the bureaucratic obstacles and corruption concerned in authorising a blended marriage beneath Myanmar’s discriminatory interfaith legal guidelines. He was additionally out on the streets following the coup in February final 12 months, taking nice private danger to cowl the protests and the crackdowns that adopted.
His story reveals as soon as once more that no person is protected from the army in Myanmar. What Ye Mon and others have suffered – the systematic use of torture and rape – are crimes in opposition to humanity and deserve the world’s condemnation. As extra survivors come ahead, their voices demanding justice will likely be troublesome to disregard. It’s a narrative that’s solely simply starting to be instructed.
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