Chomden was hundreds of miles away from her home in Myanmar in the summer of 2021 when a friend sent her an urgent message warning her that an intimate video of her was being published online.
The 25-year-old said she froze "like a statue" when she saw the message, her phone dropping from her grasp. She'd recently been doxxed.
A video of a naked Chomden – whose name has been changed to protect her identity – having sex with a former boyfriend was circulating on a public channel on the messaging platform Telegram, along with her name and Facebook profile picture, and many of the group's approximately 10,000 followers had begun sending her abusive messages.
It had only been six months after Myanmar's democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was deposed in a military coup led by General Min Aung Hlaing, who established the State Administration Council (SAC) and now administers the country as an unelected prime minister.
Chomden was on vacation at the time of the February 1 coup and felt forced to speak out on social media about the hardship of Myanmar's people and the junta's fast and violent persecution of critical voices, releasing video testimonials from those still in the country.
She had assumed that because she was far away from home, she would be safe from retaliation for her criticism of the ruling junta, but Chomden had not considered the prospect of internet retaliation.
Months after the coup, her previously private film had been made public – on a channel maintained by military sympathizers and used to distribute misinformation and dox those suspected to oppose the SAC. Chomden's Facebook photo includes a filter with the flag of Myanmar's deposed, democratically elected administration, the National Unity Government (NUG), identifying her as a supporter of the country's deposed, democratically elected government.
The accompanying text on the Telegram post, written in Burmese by the channel administrator, read: "The whore who is having sex with everyone and recording it in HD... Know your position, slut!"
Chomden was also blackmailed by strangers claiming to have more videos of her, she claims, and she felt adrift with no support system around. The post's consequences had such an impact on her mental health that she admitted:
"I have to say that I seriously considered suicide. They wanted to destroy my life," she told CNN.
This sort of issue is not only occurring to Chomden but many other young women within the country that are trying to support a cause and are being blackmailed by these pro-military groups working through the use of social media such as Telegram.
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