Cyber abuse of women due to political stance escalates in Myanmar

In Myanmar, a military coup took power on February 1, 2021. About two years later, a survey by the human rights organization Myanmar Witness revealed that politically motivated `` cyber abuse (abuse using the Internet) '' against women had increased significantly.

DIGITAL BATTLEGROUNDS: POLITICALLY MOTIVATED ABUSE OF MYANMAR WOMEN ONLINE
https://www.myanmarwitness.org/reports/digital-battlegrounds

How Myanmar women are being abused online by supporters of the military - CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/07/asia/myanmar-military-sexual-images-doxxing-telegram-as-equals-intl-cmd/index.html

Myanmar Witness quantitatively analyzed 1.6 million posts on the messaging service Telegram and compared the weeks after the 2021 coup with the end of 2022. Then, the number of politically motivated cyber abuses against women, which used to be less than five per day on average, has increased eightfold to more than 40 on average.

Ninety percent of these cyber abuses were created and shared by accounts supporting the State Governing Council (SAC), the supreme national leadership body established by the Myanmar military, and 70 percent were by male accounts. In addition, 83% of the posts were attacked by those who support the National Unity Government (NUG), which pro-democracy forces claim to be a legitimate government against the military, and the pro-democracy regular army/People's Defense Force (PDF). was a woman.

At least 50% of offensive posts were exposed, known as 'doxxing,' and women were more likely to be doxxed than men, even with similar political profiles and publicity. It seems that many of the targeted women are not ``high-profile activists,'' and many just made favorable comments on posts supporting NUG and PDF. In addition, 28% of the posts claimed that the target women should be punished even offline, calling on the Myanmar military to arrest the women and confiscate their property.

There have also been cases of sexual misinformation being spread against women who have shown tolerance towards ethnic minorities, religious minorities, and Muslim minorities, such as having sex with Muslim men. increase.

Below is an example of an offensive post on SNS, shown by Myanmar Witness. On the left is a play on words to replace a female activist (Pencilo) with a slut ( Pharcilo ), and on the right it says, 'The revolution will succeed. During pregnancy.' She got pregnant in a controlled area and still doesn't know the father.I should have warned you about this, even though there is no medicine if you get pregnant in the jungle.'

In addition to Telegram, the analysis also targeted Twitter and Facebook, but Facebook, which is particularly widely used in Myanmar, could not be analyzed on a large scale due to Meta's data access policy, so it was not possible to accurately grasp the situation. is said to be in a difficult situation.