Every arrest, every beating, and every vanished dissidents is executed under the junta’s banner, where torture and sexual violence becomes policy, and justice, a forgotten concept from a bygone era.

On 14 July 2025, the United Nations mandated Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) released its seventh report to the Human Rights Council. Covering the period between 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025, this report documented a sharp increase in human rights violation by military personnels in Myanmar. Most notably, the report raised concerns over the common pratice of ill-treatment and torture, sexual violence, abitrary killings, and other serious abuses, in Myanmar’s detention facilities.

‘We have uncovered significant evidence, including eyewitness testimony, showing systematic torture in Myanmar detention facilities….We have made headway in identifying the perpetrators, including the commanders who oversee these facilities, and we stand ready to support any jurisdictions willing and able to prosecute these crimes’

Nicholas Koumjian, Head of the IIMM

Through IIMM’s investigation from over 1300 sources and information providers to date, the report painted a colour picture of a typical day in Myanmar’s detention facilities. Gruesome torture techniques knows no bounds. Every day, military personnels would subject those they perceive as anti-military to rape and gang rape, sexual slavery, burning of sexual body parts with cigarettes or burned objects, electric shocks, strangulations, beatings, forced nudity, invasive body searches intended to humiliate, misogynistic or homophobic slurs, and threats or actual sexual and reproductive violence. In some instances, female detainees have little to no access to menstrual hygiene, to maternal or postnatal healthcare, or the basic minimum level of nutrition.

International law offers no grey area on what Myanmar’s military is doing. The junta’s wide and systemic practice of torture and other forms of inhumane and degrading treatment are in clear violation of international customary law. The failure to provide timely and unrestricted access to adequate healthcare, particularly among female detainees, may amount to a breach of the military’s legal obligation to realise the right to health among the people in Myanmar. In other words, the military has likely regressed beyond their previous commitment to ensure that everyone has access to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Beyond that, the impact tese deliberately regressive measures have on the individuals’ wellbeing is often not only physical, but also accompanied by severe psychological trauma, and social stigma.

Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reported that there are as many as 29,549 people who have been arrested by Myanmar military since their takeover in February 2021. Out of which, 22,308 remain in detention, potentially subjected to torture and ill-treatment, and living in deplorable conditions. Beyond the walls of these detention centres, the 2025 Humanitarian Need and Response Plan estimated that nearly 12.9 million people are identified as in need of support with basic health services.

Without a clear path to ending the conflict, and without a credible roadmap to establishing a civilian government committed to the protection and welfare of its people, it remains uncertain how the population of Myanmar, bearing what may be generational physical and psychological scares, can ultimately prevail.