A/HRC/39/CRP.2 prevalence in Rakhine State.359 There are good explanations for the limited information. The close monitoring and restricted movement of sexual slavery victims and the physical injuries caused by the frequency and severity of abuse they experienced lowers the rate of successful escapes and thus of information becoming available. Further, victims confined to officers’ private quarters are less likely to be seen by others or identified as sexual slaves. The survivor’s observation of other sex slaves at the base in the above account suggests that sexual slavery was not an isolated practice of the Tatmadaw forces at least in that base. 214. There are also credible reports of Tatmadaw soldiers attempting to abduct women to forcibly marry them, including to more senior officers. These instances have been accompanied by intimidation, serious physical violence and the killing of family members of the targeted woman.360 For example, in June 2011, Tatmadaw soldiers visited one interviewee’s home in Puta-O, Kachin State and asked her father if they could take her away so that a general could marry her. When her father refused, the soldiers beat him so severely that he died.361 There is information to suggest that certain Christian Kachin women are targeted for forced marriage, but also that such women are covertly forced to convert to Buddhism when they marry higher-ranking Tatmadaw officers, or when their husbands are promoted above a certain rank within the Tatmadaw. 362 Threats and retaliation for escape 215. Women who either attempted to escape or fight, or whose rape was interrupted by other events, were threatened by their perpetrators,363 including with death.364 The Mission found a consistent pattern that when women successfully escaped either during an attempted rape or after rape, the perpetrator soldier/s subsequently went to the survivor’s home searching for her,365 including with his superior officer.366 In two cases, the survivor’s relative at home was told to return the survivor to the military camp as soon as she returned home. 367 Such visits were accompanied by physically abusing the survivor’s relatives and confiscating personal property including identification cards.368 In one case, Tatmadaw soldiers destroyed a survivor’s parents’ kitchen, beat her parents and took them away for forced labour for a week.369 216. This pattern further reinforces the systematic character of abduction of victims from their homes by Tatmadaw soldiers.370 The involvement of senior officers to forcibly return women to lower-ranking soldiers reinforces the likelihood this is a widespread practice endorsed implicitly or explicitly by senior Tatmadaw commanders. Persecutory and cruel nature of the sexual violence 217. The investigation found a pattern of persecutory and derogatory behaviour accompanying perpetration of sexual abuse by Tatmadaw soldiers against Kachin women, including insults, spitting, and physical abuse.371 One survivor recounted she was called a “Kachin bitch” and “children of the fucker”.372 Another survivor said her perpetrators compared Kachin people to dogs. 373 A further witness to the gang rape of two teenage girls 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 See chapter V, section D.1.b: A human rights catastrophe – Patterns of serious human rights violations by the Myanmar security forces. PI-068, PI-090. PI-090. K-134, PI-007. DI-065, PI-005. PI-00. PI-003, PI-005, PI-007, PI-067, PI-068, QI-084. PI-005. PI-005, PI-007. PI-007, PI-023. PI-063. PI-005, PI-023, PI-057, PI-110, QI-084. PI-003, PI-004. PI-004. PI-023. 55