[VIDEO] Life in the Shadows: Silent suffering in Myanmar’s LGBT+ community

When a Coconuts Yangon reporter recently called up Win Htein, a senior aide to Aung San Suu Kyi, to ask about what the new government plans to do to protect LGBT rights, he laughed.

“Burma is not like the West. Gender issues are not important,” he said.

He’s wrong. Discrimination against LGBT people is written into law in Myanmar, where gay sex is illegal and police routinely arrest transgender women in Yangon and Mandalay. It goes further than that: in our new documentary, victims tell stories of rape and beatings while in police custody.

Watch exclusively on YouTube.




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