Local residents said military council troops are making more arrests and interrogations of women in Chin State.

A resident of Mindat said that the investigations were being carried out on the assumption that women were involved in the transportation of supplies for the local defense forces.

“They (junta forces) have spotted young women are carrying supplies for resistance forces,” the source said.

“When they interrogate the girls walking around in downtown, they find CDF pictures and contact phone numbers in their mobile phones,” he added. “When young men rarely wander around downtown, young women carried out tasks on behalf of them.”

The focus on women was also said to be linked to pictures of women attending military training on social media.

A woman being in confinement and a woman being seven months pregnant were raped by military council soldiers in Et Loi village in Tedim township on November 11.

A Chin woman told Mizzima that such rapes are a common occurrence in ethnic areas.

"Such incidents are more common in areas where armed resistance forces are strong. It's like burning a barn as rats cannot be annihilated,” she said, noting that the Myanmar troops regard women as a sexual target.

"Ethnic women feel insecurity despite living in their homelands. In the plains and urban areas, women feel even more insecure during the time of the coup. They are afraid to go anywhere," she said.

Locals claims that Mindat township has the highest number of women arrested and sent to prison in Chin State.

Mindat has been the focus of intense fighting between the junta and PDF forces.

Both men and women are subject to arbitrary arrests and attacks. On the afternoon of November 16, a pastor carrying Elephant Foot Yam (Wa U) in Mindat township was arrested and tortured by military council troops. He was eventually released.