Outrage in Thabaung as Village Administrator Takes Bribe to Cover Up Attempted Rape of Pregnant Woman, Sparking Human Rights Concerns

Public Myanmar News, May 18, 2026.

By PM01,

An attempted rape targeting a 20-year-old woman, who is five months pregnant, occurred in Thae Phyu Village Tract, Thabaung Township, Ayeyarwady Region.

Furthermore, local residents told the revolutionary news source, *Special Intelligence Force - Pathein*, that the village tract administrator failed to take legal action and instead extorted money from the victim's family to cover up the crime.

The incident took place on May 14 in U-Yin-Kone Village, Thae Phyu Village Tract. While her husband was away from home, the pregnant woman was gathering vegetables near her house when a fellow villager, identified as Phoe Cho, took advantage of the situation and attempted to forcefully assault her.

Despite her desperate tears and pleas, as she explained she was five months pregnant, the perpetrator refused to listen and persisted with the assault. Following a prolonged struggle to defend her life and her unborn child, the victim heard the sound of incoming motorcycles belonging to villagers returning from a bank. Startled by the approaching noise, Phoe Cho fled before 

completing the assault.

Family members of the victim told Public Myanmar News that the traumatized pregnant woman, seeking justice, immediately reported the assault to the Thae Phyu Village Tract Administrator, Ko Myint, on the very same day, accompanied by a ten-household head.

The victim's family stated that Administrator Ko Myint initially demanded 20,000 MMK to open the case. However, as of today, May 18—four days after the incident—he has failed to notify the police or take any steps to apprehend the suspect, effectively burying the case after accepting the money.

The perpetrator, Phoe Cho, reportedly has a notorious history of local thefts and moral misconduct involving the harassment of women in the village, and he remains at large.

Commenting on the situation, a local resident spoke on the condition of anonymity due to security concerns:

 "It is utterly disgusting that a pregnant woman was violated like this, and the village administrator took money just to stay silent. He has done absolutely nothing for us. We do not have the financial means to travel directly to the township administration office, which is why we sought help from the administrator. Instead, he demanded 20,000 MMK and buried the case. With the criminal still roaming free, we are deeply worried about the safety of other women here."

Since the breakdown of local governance and law enforcement mechanisms in Myanmar, violence against women has become increasingly severe. Local residents are urgently demanding immediate accountability and effective legal action against both the perpetrator, Phoe Cho, and the corrupt administrator, Ko Myint, who shielded the criminal through bribery.

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Human Rights Violations and Oppression Worsen Against Inmates at Myaungmya Prison

Public Myanmar News, May 18, 2026.

By Saw Zin Maung,

Severe human rights violations, corruption, and moral misconduct are heavily taking place against inmates inside Myaungmya Prison in Myaungmya Township, Ayeyarwady Region, according to a report by the Special Intelligence Force, a revolutionary news source.

Sources close to the prison staff told Public Myanmar News that an inmate named "Maung Aye," who is serving a sentence for murder and rape, was appointed as the chief prison monitor (Tan-see-choke) for the entire facility by prison officials earlier this year in 2026. Since then, he has been abusing his authority to abuse and torture detainees.

According to the sources, those oppressed by Maung Aye include local residents from townships such as Myaungmya, Wakema, Laputta, and Einme, with some victims being elderly individuals aged 70 to 80.

Family members of the victims stated that elderly inmates are being beaten and verbally abused under the pretext of failing to remember the mandatory prison posture. Furthermore, inmates are subjected to extortion, facing a fee of 50,000 MMK per person if they wish to transfer from the disciplinary cells to other regular prison cells.

In addition, lower-ranking prison staff are reportedly addressing 70-year-old elderly inmates using derogatory language, while subjecting them to inhumane beatings and severe torture, according to staff sources close to the prison.

In response to these human rights violations, prison sources reported that inmates are demanding an end to the inhumane group beatings and violence perpetrated by certain prison staff, regardless of whether an inmate has committed a disciplinary infraction or not. They are also demanding a designated 30-minute visitation window for visitors traveling from afar, alongside properly regulated schedules for morning, afternoon, and evening cell openings and lockdowns.

Local residents and families of the inmates have emphasized that the prisoners are constantly facing severe restrictions while staff abuse their authority and lack empathy. They further asserted that senior officials, from the chief jailer and prison superintendent down to the lower-ranking staff, must be held accountable for this ongoing corruption and systemic oppression.

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Moderate Earthquake Noticeably Felt Across Several Townships, Including Yangon

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Public Myanmar News, May 18, 2026.

By Ko Saw

Local residents told Public Myanmar News that a moderate earthquake struck this morning, May 18, starting at 8:30 AM, and was noticeably felt across several townships, including the Yangon Region.

While many urban residents distinctly felt the tremors, some reported that they did not notice the quake at all.

"It was quite noticeable. I felt the entire room shaking," said a resident living in Mingaladon Township.

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According to My Earthquake Alerts, a digital earthquake monitoring system, the quake registered a magnitude of 5.23 on the Richter scale, classifying it as a moderate earthquake. The alert, issued at 8:45 AM today (May 18), indicated that the epicenter was located within in Kyarktann township ,Yangon Region.

Myanmar has experienced a continuous series of earthquakes since the Sagaing earthquake struck on March 28, 2025.

Earlier this year in 2026, another moderate earthquake with a magnitude of 5.4 also hit, centered in Minbya Township, Rakhine State.

According to monitoring by Public Myanmar News, there have been at least over a dozen minor to moderate earthquakes recorded in townships situated along active fault lines from the beginning of this year up until the third week of May.

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ထိုင်း-မြန်မာနယ်စပ် တာ့ခ်ခရိုင်အတွင်းမှာ တရားမဝင် မှောင်ခိုဆေးလိပ် အလိပ်ရေ ၇ သောင်းနဲ့အတူ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသား ၃ ဦးကို ထိုင်းအာဏာပိုင်တွေက ဖမ်းဆီး Three Myanmar Nationals Arrested in Tak for Smuggling 70,000 Illegal Cigarettes

 

ထိုင်း-မြန်မာနယ်စပ် တာ့ခ်ခရိုင်အတွင်းမှာ တရားမဝင် မှောင်ခိုဆေးလိပ် အလိပ်ရေ ၇ သောင်းနဲ့အတူ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသား ၃ ဦးကို ထိုင်းအာဏာပိုင်တွေက ဖမ်းဆီး

Three Myanmar Nationals Arrested in Tak for Smuggling 70,000 Illegal Cigarettes

Public Myanmar News, May 12 , 2026.

By Saw Zin Maung,

Photo- Social Media 

ထိုင်းနိုင်ငံ၊ တာ့ခ်ခရိုင်၊ မယ်လမတ်မြို့နယ်အတွင်းမှာ တရားမဝင် မှောင်ခိုဆေးလိပ်တွေ သယ်ဆောင်လာတဲ့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသား ၃ ဦးကို အမှတ် (၃၅၀၄) ထိုင်းအခြေစိုက် ခြေလျင်တပ်ရင်းနဲ့ အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးအဖွဲ့တွေ ပူးပေါင်းပြီး မေလ ၁၁ ရက်နေ့ ညနေပိုင်းက ဖမ်းဆီးလိုက်ပါတယ်။

Three Myanmar nationals were arrested on the afternoon of May 11 in Mae Ramat District, Tak Province, after being caught smuggling illegal cigarettes during a joint operation by the Thai 3504th Ranger Forces and local administrative authorities.

မယ်လမတ်မြို့နယ်၊ ဘန်ဟွေဟန့် ကျေးရွာအနီးမှာ နယ်မြေစိုးမိုးရေး ကင်းလှည့်နေတဲ့ ထိုင်းစစ်တပ်ဟာ လုံခြုံရေးစစ်ဆေးရေးဂိတ်ကို ရှောင်ကွင်းပြီး မသင်္ကာဖွယ်ရာ စက္ကူဖာတွေ သယ်ဆောင်လာတဲ့ အမျိုးသား ၃ ဦးကို တွေ့ရှိခဲ့တာပါ။ စစ်ဆေးကြည့်ရှုတဲ့အခါမှာတော့ ဖာ ၇ ဖာအတွင်း ထည့်သွင်းထားတဲ့ "Krongthip" တံဆိပ်ပါ ပြည်ပပို့ကုန်အဖြစ် သတ်မှတ်ထားတဲ့ မှောင်ခိုဆေးလိပ် အလိပ်ရေ စုစုပေါင်း ၇၀,၀၀၀ ကို သိမ်းဆည်းရမိခဲ့တာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

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While conducting a routine security patrol near Ban Huai Haeng village in Mae Ramat, Thai soldiers spotted three suspicious men attempting to bypass a security checkpoint while carrying large cardboard boxes. Upon inspection, authorities seized seven boxes containing a total of 70,000 "Krongthip" brand cigarettes, which were labeled "For Export Only."

ဖမ်းဆီးရမိသူတွေကတော့ အသက် ၂၆ နှစ်အရွယ် မောင်ပါခဲ၊ ၂၅ နှစ်အရွယ် မောင်ဘီစီ နဲ့ ၄၅ နှစ်အရွယ် ဦးအီစာ တို့ ဖြစ်ကြပါတယ်။ သူတို့ ၃ ဦးစလုံးဟာ မယ်လ ဒုက္ခသည်

စခန်း (Zone C) မှာ နေထိုင်သူတွေဖြစ်ကြောင်း စစ်ဆေးတွေ့ရှိခဲ့ရတယ်လို့ထိုင်းအာဏာပိုင်ဘက်ကပြောပါတယ်။

According to Thai authorities, the suspects have been identified as 26-year-old Maung Pa Kae, 25-year-old Maung B.C., and 45-year-old U Isa. All three are residents of Zone C in the Mae La Refugee Camp.

ဖမ်းဆီးခံရသူတွေရဲ့ ထွက်ဆိုချက်အရ အဆိုပါဆေးလိပ်တွေကို အမည်မသိ အနက်ရောင် ပစ်ကပ်ကားတစ်စီးက လမ်းဘေးနားနေဆောင်တစ်ခုမှာ လာရောက်ချထားပေးခဲ့တာဖြစ်ပြီး၊ သူတို့ကတော့ အဆိုပါဆေးလိပ်တွေကို မယ်လစခန်းအတွင်းမှာ ပြန်လည်ရောင်းချဖို့အတွက် တစ်ဦးကို သယ်ဆောင်ခ ဘတ် ၄၀၀ စီနဲ့ လက်ခံသယ်ဆောင်လာတာလို့ ဝန်ခံထားပါတယ်။

During interrogation, the suspects confessed that an unidentified black pickup truck had dropped off the contraband at a roadside rest area. They admitted to being hired for 400 THB each to transport the cigarettes into the Mae La camp, where they were intended for resale.

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လောလောဆယ်မှာတော့ သူတို့ကို မယ်လမတ်ရဲစခန်းမှာ ထိန်းသိမ်းထားပြီး ယစ်မျိုးဥပဒေ၊ အကောက်ခွန်ဥပဒေတွေအပြင် ထိုင်းနိုင်ငံအတွင်း တရားမဝင် ဝင်ရောက်နေထိုင်မှု ပုဒ်မတွေနဲ့ပါ အမှုဖွင့် အရေးယူဆောင်ရွက်ထားကြောင်းထိုင်းအာဏာပိုင်ဘက်ကပြောပါတယ်။

The suspects are currently being held at the Mae Ramat Police Station. They face multiple charges, including violations of the Excise Act, the Customs Act, and illegal entry into Thailand.

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ထိုင်းပြည်ထဲရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာနအနေနဲ့ အခုလို တရားမဝင်ဆေးလိပ်တွေကြောင့် နိုင်ငံတော် အခွန်ဝင်ငွေ ထိခိုက်မှုတွေရှိနေတာမို့ နယ်စပ်တစ်လျှောက် မှောင်ခိုလုပ်ငန်းတွေကို အရှိန်အဟုန်မြှင့် နှိမ်နင်းသွားမယ်လို့လည်း ထုတ်ပြန်ထားပါတယ်။

The Thai Ministry of Interior stated that illegal cigarette smuggling causes significant loss in state tax revenue. Consequently, authorities have announced plans to intensify crackdowns on smuggling operations along the border.

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ရခိုင်မှာ ၆ ဒသမ ဝ အဆင့် အင်အားပြင်းငလျင်လှုပ်ခတ် A powerful 6.0-magnitude earthquake has struck Rakhine State.

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Public Myanmar News,  February 3 2026.

By Ko Saw, 

ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်ကနေရာအများအပြားမှာ ဒီကနေ့ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ ၃ ရက် ညအချိန်မှာ  ၆ ဒသမ ဝ အဆင့်ရှိ အင်အားပြင်းငလျင် နှစ်ကြိမ်ထက်မနည်းလှုပ်ခတ်သွားခဲ့ပါတယ်။

Multiple areas across Rakhine State were shaken late tonightas at least two earthquakes hit the region.

 ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ် အမ်းမြို့ ရဲ့ မြောက်ဘက် ၅၀ မိုင်ခန့်အကွာရခိုင်ရိုးမတောင်တန်းကိုဗဟိုပြုပြီး  ဒီကနေ့  ည ၁ဝ နာရီ ၄ မိနစ် နဲ့  ၂၂ မိနစ် တို့မှာ အင်အား ၆ဒသမ ၀ အဆင့် နဲ့ ၅ဒသမ ၁၇ အဆင့်ရှိတဲ့ ငလျင် နှစ်ကြိမ် လှုပ်ခတ်ခဲ့တာလို့ မြေငလျင်သတင်းများနဲ့ သုတေသနပြုစင်တာက ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့တာဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

According to an earthquake monitoring and research center,the epicenter was located in the Rakhine Yoma mountain range,about 50 miles north of Ann Township.The first quake, measuring magnitude 6.0, struck at 10:04 p.m.,followed by a second tremor of magnitude 5.17 at 10:22 p.m..

ငလျင်လှုပ်ခတ်ခံရမှုနဲ့ပက်သက်လို့ ရခိုင်စာရေးဆရာဝေဟင်အောင် က” ရခိုင်မှာ ငလျင်က ၂ကြိမ်လှုပ်သွားတယ်။ ပထမအကြိမ်၁၀နာရီ ၄မိနစ်မှာ လှုပ်တာက အတော်အသင့်ပြင်းတယ်။ ဒုတိယ ၁၀ နာရီ ၂၂ မိနစ်မှာ  ထပ်လှုပ်တယ်။ ပထမအခေါက်လောက် မပြင်းဘူး။ လက်လှမ်းမှီသလောက် မြို့နယ်တွေကို စုံစမ်းကြည့်တော့ အပျက်အစီးသတင်းတော့ မကြားမိပါ။ ဘေးကင်းတယ်လို့ ယူဆရပါတယ်”လို့လူမှုစာမျက်နှာကနေအသိပေး ပြောပါတယ်။

Rakhine writer Wa Hin Aung said the first quake was strong,while the second was weaker.So far, he said, no major damage or casualties have been reported, based on information from nearby townships.

ယခုလှုပ်ခတ်သွားခဲ့တဲ့ငလျင်ဟာ မြေအောက်အနက် ၃၅ မိုင်ခန့် အလယ်လတ်အနက်ရှိတဲ့ငလျင်တခုဖြစ်ကာ ငလျင်တုန်ခါဒဏ်ကို သိသိသာသာခံစားခဲ့ရတယ်လို့ ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်အပါအဝင် အခြားသက်ရောက်တဲ့ တိုင်းနဲ့ပြည်နယ်ဒေသခံတွေကဆိုပါတယ်။

The earthquake occurred at an estimated depth of 35 miles,and was felt not only in Rakhine but also in neighboring regions and states.

ငလျင်ရဲ့တုန်ခါမှုကြောင့်အဆောက်အအုံတွေလှုပ်ခါတာနဲ့အိမ်အမိုးတွေမြည်ဟိန်းတဲ့အထိဖြစ်ပေါ်ခဲ့တဲ့အတွက်ဒေသခံတွေစိုးရိမ်ထိန့်လန့်စွာနဲ့ နေအိမ်ပြင်ပလမ်းနေရာကိုထွက်ပြေးခဲ့ကြရတယ်လို့ပြောပါတယ်။

Residents reported shaking buildings and rattling roofs, forcing many people to flee outside in fear.

လက်ရှိအချိန်အထိ ငလျင်ဒဏ်ကြောင့်လူသေဆုံးထိခိုက်တာနဲ့ အဆောက်အအုံပျက်စီးခဲ့တဲ့အခြေအနေတွေကို လူထုမြန်မာသတင်းဌာနမှ စုံစမ်းနေဆဲဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

At this time, Public Myanmar News is still verifying whether there were any injuries or structural damage.

လှုပ်ခတ်ခဲ့တဲ့ငလျင်ဟာအင်အားပြင်းထန်တာကြောင့်ရက်ပိုင်းအတွင်းနောက်ဆက်တွဲငလျင်ငယ်တွေဆက်လက်လှုပ်ခတ်နိုင်တဲ့အတွက်ဒေသခံတွေအနေနဲ့ဘေးကင်းရာကိုရွှေ့ပြောင်းနေထိုင်သင့်ကာအတည်မပြုနိုင်တဲ့ကောလဟလသတင်းတွေကိုသတိထားရှောင်ကြဉ်ကြဖို့ ငလျင်ပညာရှင်တွေက သတိပေးတိုက်တွန်းထားပါတယ်။

Seismologists warn that aftershocks may follow in the coming days,and urge residents to stay in safe areas

and avoid spreading unverified information.

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Protest Marks Five Years Since Military Coup in Hpakant

Photo- CJ 

Public Myanmar News | 1 February 2026

Residents of Hpakant, Kachin State, staged an anti-coup protest on February 1 to mark the fifth anniversary of Myanmar’s military takeover, while also voicing opposition to the controversial Myitsone Dam Project.

Photo- CJ

The protest took place near Saing Taung village, on the outskirts of Hpakant.

Local residents said the demonstration was held despite heavy security risks, as clashes have been ongoing in nearby areas since January 31, and junta forces based in the town have been firing artillery into surrounding areas.

During the protest, demonstrators held banners and chanted slogans including:

• “No to the Myitsone Dam Project”

• “Stop the Myitsone Project Immediately”

• “Hpakant is still resisting”

• “The people come first — no dictatorship”

• “No to the military coup”

• “Let’s unite to overthrow the terrorist military”

• “Join together to win the Spring Revolution”

• “Reject Min Aung Hlaing’s illegal election backed by the Chinese government”

The protest highlighted continued public resistance to military rule, even under dangerous conditions.

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Five Years Since the Military Coup in Myanmar

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Public Myanmar News | 1 February 2026

By Ko Saw

Today marks five years since the military coup in Myanmar, which took place on February 1, 2021.

The Myanmar military seized power after claiming—without evidence—that the 2020 general election, overwhelmingly won by the National League for Democracy (NLD), was fraudulent.

The country’s civilian leaders, including State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint, were arrested and charged under multiple politically motivated laws. Thousands of political prisoners remain behind bars across the country.

Photo- CJ 

Crackdown on Civil Resistance

In early 2021, millions of civil servants and civilians joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), a nationwide non-violent protest campaign aimed at restoring democracy.

The military responded with live ammunition, mass arrests, and brutal repression.

Photo- CJ

Some of the earliest deadly crackdowns occurred in late February and March 2021, including the violent dispersal of protests in Hlaing Tharyar, Yangon, and Mandalay.

Photo- CJ

On April 9, 2021, security forces opened fire on demonstrators in Bago, killing nearly 100 people and arresting more than 50. The massacre became one of the deadliest single-day attacks since the coup.

Rise of Armed Resistance

In February 2021, elected lawmakers formed the Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), followed by the creation of the National Unity Government (NUG).

In March 2021, young activists formed the People’s Defence Force (PDF), launching armed resistance against the military regime.

One of the most significant battles took place on December 14, 2021, in Lay Kay Kaw, Karen State, which later became a symbol of nationwide resistance.

Escalation of War

In October 2023, the resistance launched Operation 1027, led by the Three Brotherhood Alliance—

the Arakan Army (AA), Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA).

The operation expanded across northern and southern Shan State, Mandalay, Sagaing, Chin, Rakhine, and Ayeyarwady regions, resulting in the seizure of large territories from military control.

As the regime’s forces weakened, the junta introduced a forced conscription law in March 2024, abducting young men for military training. Those who refused were reportedly forced to pay heavy monthly fines.

Thousands of conscripts were sent to the front lines with little or no combat training. Since 2024, many have been killed, while hundreds have defected or surrendered.

Humanitarian Crisis

As of February 2026, fighting continues nationwide.

More than two million people have been displaced and are living as internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Junta’s Sham Elections

To retain power, the military held staged elections in three phases:

• December 28, 2025

• January 11, 2026

• January 24, 2026

The United Nations and much of the international community rejected the process as illegal and fraudulent.

China, however, recognized the outcome and described the process as successful.

Looking Forward

Five years after the coup, Myanmar remains under military rule.

Yet across the country, citizens and resistance forces continue to fight for freedom, democracy, and peace—holding on to hope for a future beyond dictatorship.

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