This article is a republication of the June 21, 2020 statement of civil society organisations in Myanmar on the year-long internet shutdown in Rakhine and Chin states. Chit Hnin Yu from Free Expression Myanmar writes about her thoughts on the internet shutdown and the joint statement:

Last Sunday (June 21, 2020) marked one year since the government shut down the internet in Rakhine and Chin states in Myanmar. Over 1.4 million people still have no access to the internet. They cannot communicate, learn, run their businesses, or get information about COVID-19 in this time. Even though these people are living in conflict areas, they absolutely have the right to access the internet. But the Myanmar government is still extending this shutdown, citing national security as their reason even though they know well this shutdown is a violation on human rights.

Because of this, we from civil society organisations, including local and international organisations and institutions, urge the Myanmar Government to lift internet shutdown in Rakhine and Chin States immediately.

Thank you, everyone, for being our strength. I hope we can stand together and show our solidarity on similar and further human rights issues in future.

Statement: Civil society marks 1-year of world’s longest internet shutdown

Today, 21 June, is the first anniversary of the shutdown of all mobile internet access in Myanmar’s Rakhine and Chin States. This is the longest internet shutdown in the world. Approximately 1.4 million people in eight townships in those States are suffering from the ongoing violation of their economic, social, cultural, developmental, political, and civil rights.

The Myanmar government has claimed the shutdown is for national security. However, there has been no evidence that the decision has reduced the ongoing conflict. Instead, it has caused significant harm to civilians in one of the least developed regions of Myanmar, during the global COVID-19 pandemic. It has been internationally condemned as disproportionate, including by the UN.

We condemn the continued shutdown and call on the government to immediately lift all restrictions on internet access and to restore telecommunications unconditionally to full capacity. We also call on the government to:

ယနေ့ ဇွန်လ (၂၁) ရက်နေ့သည် ရခိုင်နှင့် ချင်းပြည်နယ်တို့တွင် မိုဘိုင်းအင်တာနက်ဆက်သွယ်မှု စတင် ဖြတ်တောက်ခံရမှုသည် တစ်နှစ်ပြည့် နှစ်ပတ်လည် အထိရောက်ရှိလာပြီဖြစ်သည်။ ဤအင်တာနက် ဖြတ်တောက်ခံရမှုသည် လက်ရှိတွင် ကမ္ဘာ့အရှည်ကြာဆုံးသော အင်တာနက်ဖြတ်တောက်မှုဖြစ်ကာ အဆိုပါပြည်နယ်များရှိ မြို့နယ် (၈) မြို့နယ်မှ ၁.၄ သန်းခန့်သော ဒေသခံပြည်သူတို့သည် ၎င်းတို့၏ စီးပွားရေး၊ လူမှုရေး၊ ယဉ်ကျေးမှု၊ ဖွံ့ဖြိုးတိုးတက်မှု၊ နိုင်ငံရေး နှင့် နိုင်ငံသား အခွင့်အရေးများအား ချိုးဖောက်ခံရခြင်းကို ကြုံတွေ့ခံစားနေကြရသည်။

မြန်မာအစိုးရသည် အင်တာနက်ဖြတ်တောက်မှုအား နိုင်ငံတော်လုံခြုံရေးအတွက်လုပ် ဆောင်ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်ဟု ဆိုခဲ့ပါသည်။ သို့ရာတွင်မူ ထိုသို့လုပ်ဆောင်ခြင်းသည် ယခုဖြစ်ပွားလျက်ရှိသော ပဋိပက္ခအား လျော့ပါးသွားစေသည်ဟူသော အထောက်အထား မတွေ့ရှိရပေ။ ထိုဖြတ်တောက်မှုသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ ဖွံ့ဖြိုးတိုးတက်မှုနောက်အကျဆုံးသော ဒေသများတွင်ရှိသော ဒေသခံလူထုအား ယခုဖြစ်ပွားနေသော COVID-19 ကမ္ဘာ့ကပ်ရောဂါကာလအတွင်းတွင် ဆိုးရွားသောထိခိုက်မှုများကို ကြုံတွေ့စေသည်။ ထိုသို့ လုပ်ဆောင်ခြင်းသည် သင့်လျော်မှုမရှိကြောင်း ကုလသမဂ္ဂအပါအဝင် နိုင်ငံတကာမှ ရှုံ့ချခဲ့ကြသည်။

သို့ဖြစ်ပါ၍ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့သည် ဆက်လက်ဖြစ်ပွားနေသော အင်တာနက်ဖြတ်တောက်မှုအား ရှုံ့ချလိုက်ကာ အစိုးရအား ကန့်သတ်ပိတ်ဆို့မှုများအား ချက်ချင်းရုတ်သိမ်းပြီး စွမ်းရည်ပြည့်ဝသော ဆက်သွယ်ရေးလိုင်း များအား အကန့်အသတ်မရှိ ပြန်လည်တည်ဆောက်ပေးရန် တိုက်တွန်းတောင်းဆိုလိုက်သည်။ ထို့အပြင် ကျွန်ုပ်တို့သည် အစိုးရအား အောက်ပါအချက်များကိုလည်း တောင်းဆိုပါသည်။

“Kenapa Jaringan Internet Di Putus? (red)” Ditangkap dari video Pemutusan Jaringan Internet di Papua dari West Papua Updates (WPU), digunakan dengan izin WPU.

Read this article in English

Awal bulan Juni 2020, Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara (PTUN) menyatakan Pemerintah Indonesia, dalam hal ini Presiden RI dan Kementerian Komunikasi dan Informasi (Menkominfo), telah melanggar hukum atas tindakan pelambatan (throttling) dan pemblokiran internet di beberapa wilayah di Papua dan Papua Barat pada tahun 2019. Kasus yang terjadi selama kurang lebih satu bulan dari tanggal 19 Agustus hingga 28 September 2019 ini diajukan ke PTUN oleh koalisi kelompok masyarakat sipil yang ada di Asia Tenggara.

Kemenangan Tim Pembela Kebebasan Pers atas gugatan pada Menkominfo dan Presiden RI, menjadi contoh baik menyikapi cara pemerintah menerapkan otoritasnya dalam pengelolaan Internet. Proses yang panjang, mulai dari pertemuan tatap muka dengan Kemkominfo, memenangkan petisi daring, rupanya masih harus dibawa ke jalur hukum.

Putusan ini menjadi sangat penting mengingat selama ini, kebebasan pers dan kebebasan berekspresi di dalam maupun tentang Papua berada dalam status quo narasi hiper nasionalisme. Narasi ini memaksa Papua untuk tunduk pada Indonesia dan menuduh semua upaya untuk membela hak-hak warga Papua, serta protes terhadap rasisme dan diskriminasi yang mereka alami, sebagai “separatis”.  Pada akhirnya, pemblokiran internet ini adalah upaya untuk membungkam protes melawan rasisme dan diskriminasi terhadap warga Papua.

Pemblokiran Internet pada 2019

Selanjutnya, dalam siaran pers 27 Mei 2019, Rudiantara menyebutkan tiga langkah yang dilakukan pemerintah, antara lain:

1. Menutup akses tautan konten atau akun yang terindikasi menyebarkan hoaks
2. Bekerja sama dengan penyedia platform digital untuk menutup akun
3. Membatasi akses terhadap sebagian fitur platform digital atau berbagi file

Tak hanya melalui Kemenkominfo, Menteri Koordinator Bidang Politik, Hukum, dan Keamanan Wiranto pun menyatakan telah membatasi akses media sosial untuk pengguna internet di Indonesia.

Artikel ini ditulis dan diedit oleh Fendi Widianto, Nikholas Borang, Pitra Hutomo, dan Kathleen Azali dari EngageMedia. Untuk mengetahui lebaih banyak cerita tentang Papua dan Papua Barat, silahkan kunjungi PapuanVoices.net.

“Why was our Internet connection shut down? (edited)” Screengrab from the video “The Internet Shutdown in Papua”  by West Papuan Updates, used with permission.

Baca artikel ini dalam Bahasa Indonesia

Earlier this month, the Jakarta State Administrative Court declared as illegal the internet shutdowns in Papua and West Papua enforced by the Indonesian government in 2019. The case on the month-long shutdown, from August 19 to September 28 last year, was filed by a coalition of civil society groups working in Southeast Asia. Part of the coalition is SAFEnet, which was present at the Coconet digital rights camp.

The victory of the Press Freedom Defender Team over the lawsuit against the Minister of Communication and Information and the President of the Republic of Indonesia, is a good example of how citizens can respond to government’s unlawful management of public communication infrastructure like the Internet. The long process, starting from the face-to-face meeting with the Ministry of Communication and Information, to creating an online petition, eventually had to be brought to a legal route. The Press Freedom Defenders Team includes SAFEnet, which was present at the second Coconet digital rights camp.

The ruling is also even more important in the context of debates in freedom of the press and freedom of expression in and about Papua are framed within the hyper-nationalism narrative of the status quo. After all, the shutdown was implemented to quell the protests against racism and discriminations of Papuans.

Internet bans in 2019

This internet throttling was triggered by the announcement of the 2019 Presidential Election results in April 2019.

In another press release, Rudiantara outlined the three steps in which the Indonesian government implemented the throttling:

1. Block access to content links or accounts that had been indicated to spread hoaxes
2. Work closely with digital platform providers to close accounts
3. Limit access to some digital platform features or file sharing

Aside from the Ministry of Communication & Informatics, the Coodinating Minister of Politics, Law and Security, Wiranto, also stated that the government had limited the access to social media to internet users in Indonesia.

This article was written and edited by EngageMedia’s Fendi Widianto, Nikholas Borang, Pitra Hutomo, and Kathleen Azali. For more stories on Papua and West Papua, visit PapuanVoices.net.

On May 3, 2020, the Myanmar government restored internet access in Maungdaw township, one of Myanmar’s nine townships in Arakan (formally known as Rakhine State) and Chin State without internet access for almost a year. The reason, they reported, was due to more stability in the area. But in reality, the grounds for reinstalling the internet are different from the reported reason. In fact, the government and military are using the internet shutdown to monopolize information, thereby robbing people of the truth on Arakan conflicts.

For the government of Myanmar, there are two burning political issues in Arakan: the question of armed revolution by the Arakan Army (AA), which the government has declared a terrorist group, and the case of ethnic Rohingya Muslims, who the UN International Court of Justice said should be protected from genocide and military violence. The two issues are related to each other – the self-determination of the Arakan region must consider the group rights of Rohingya Muslims, while the group rights of Rohingya Muslims must also be compatible with the autonomy of the Arakan community.

Countering AA through information and media

The military strategy to fight the AA and other rebel groups in the country can be summarised into cutting them off in four key areas: recruitment, food, budget, and information. The first three parts of this strategy have resulted in tens of thousands of innocent civilians displaced and moved to internal refugee camps. A number of villages have also been burned down in order to separate rebels and local supporters. From December 2019 to mid-April 2020, the nongovernment organization Burma Monitor reported over 163,000 displacements, 366 deaths, 406 injuries, and 45 arrests in Arakan and Chin State alone.

The fourth part, information, means to censor news and media about the Arakan conflicts. To do this, the government has sued and continues to sue local and international media under different laws such as counter-terrorism and unlawful association. Among the media outfits sued were national organisations Voice of Myanmar and Khit-Thit Media, as well as local media like Narinjara and Development Media Group (DMG). On top of this, websites by the AA and local media remain blocked in the country, meaning audiences cannot access information on them through locally operated telecommunication channels.

Due to the lawsuits, domestic media no longer interview the AA to get their side of the story, which in turn has led to one-sided or biased news, and even government and military propaganda. Here are four prominent examples of this, all within April 2020.

The April 29 shooting of a World Food Programme truck in Paletwa Town, Chin State was reported differently by national media (left) and state media. Whatever the truth is, it is alarming that the Arakan Army is automatically blamed without prior investigation, and the people in the conflict-stricken area not consulted.

On the morning of April 13, 2020, artillery shelling from the military’s Battalion No. 550 hit the Yangon-Sittwe Highway near the village of Kyauk-Sike, Ponnagyun township. Eight innocent civilians were killed and seven more were injured. This story was covered by a number of regional and international media like Reuters, Aljazeera, Radio Free Asia (RFA), and The Irrawaddy, which highlighted the event while also interviewing family members of the deceased. There was also evidence showing that the artillery and weapon marks were from Myanmar military products. However, the state media, especially military-owned ones like Myawaddy TV, reported there was no such event that day and that all news and information on it were fake and fabricated.

The second most prominent example is the April 20 killing of the World Health Organization (WHO) driver in Min-Bra Township, one of the conflict areas with no internet access, while carrying COVID-19 samples to be tested in Yangon. Both the government and the AA denied being behind the attack. Whatever the truth is, international media remained neutral in their coverage of the attack. But state media coverage and messaging to the local community concluded it was an AA attack, citing only statements from the government and military. The one-sided nature of the story has reportedly made the local people in Arakan angry and disappointed. Weeks later, the Myanmar government formed a committee to investigate the attack. The investigation is still ongoing, but based on previous statements, it is clear the commission will say it is an AA attack. In fact, presidential spokesperson U Zaw Htay already said even before the end of the investigation: “It (WHO car) was attacked by AA and we formed a committee to investigate it in order to fulfil the international demand”.

Monopolizing the news

These four examples have shown us how the government and military manipulate and monopolize news and information on conflicts in Arakan. Continuing to do so, however, can potentially escalate this conflict in the future. After all, the real motive of restoring the internet is less about the armed conflict or stability, and more about addressing international pressure, such as allowing the Rohingya Muslims’ voluntary repatriation. These efforts have since been suspended due to COVID-19 and the increasing number of cases in neighbouring Bangladesh. On top of that, the armed conflict in Arakan shows no sign of ceasing or reducing despite the AA’s declaration of a unilateral ceasefire till the end of May 2020 due to the pandemic. These recent decisions have led to criticism of Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, thought by most democratic Burmese and non-Burmese ethnic people to be a moderator or mediator between the two sides of the armed conflict. It is also clear that these events have led to more identity-based politics, like Burmese vs non-Burmese people.

Let me highlight three sentences from the book 1984 by English novelist George Orwell: “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery”, and “Ignorance is Strength”. The Myanmar government and military, like the book’s Ministry of Truth, are trying to rob the truth in Arakan conflicts, thus making people “more fearful” and “less knowing”. As the local people in Arakan become more fearful, they become mute. As the people in Myanmar become less knowing, they become blind and deaf.

Covering up these atrocities in Arakan makes “Wrong into Right” and “Right into Wrong”.

Kyaw Lynn is a postgraduate student majoring in Political Science at the University of Yangon in Myanmar. He is also the chairperson of his university’s Political Science Association and one of the founders of Amnesty Arakan Team.

The internet is a primary source of information on the global COVID-19 pandemic. But Arakan (formally known as Rakhine State) in western Myanmar is now experiencing the longest internet shutdown in the world. Arakan is the second poorest area in Myanmar, with very weak health infrastructure in place. The internet blockage has also caused a lack of information and knowledge concerning COVID-19.

The first internet shutdown started in June 21, 2019, in four townships in northern Arakan. Another five townships (one in neighboring Chin State) followed in February 3, 2020. This coming April 21, it will be approximately 330 days since the first four areas have been without internet, while it will be nearly 100 days for the latter townships.

The government has given different reasons for the shutdown, such as the stopping of the hate speech, disinformation, and instability due to conflict in the area. None of these are justifiable.

The situation in Rakhine

Although the world is now fighting against COVID-19, over one million people in northern Arakan are still being neglected by the government action plan. As of April 19, Myanmar now has 107 positive cases and five deaths attributed to the coronavirus. The Myanmar government has not announced any case from Arakan. But this number is in danger of ballooning. Arakan is very close to Bangladesh, where there are a reported 2,456 positive cases and 91 deaths as of the same date. But if not addressed, Arakan will remain very prone to local transmissions in the border area.

The conflict has resulted in about 200,000 internally displaced persons (IDP) in the region are also living in camps without any well-built shelter and well-managed food distribution. The lack of social distancing in the IDP camps, the lack of water availability, and the lack of information on COVID-19 make it impossible to prevent a coronavirus outbreak in the area.

Unfortunately, what makes the people to be more fearful is the military attack on the civilian target rather than COVID-19. It seems the Myanmar government and military are more enthusiastic to fight against the Arakan Army than COVID-19 in the region. But under these three situations – internet shutdown, IDP camps, and ongoing armed conflict – it is unimaginable how the situation could be worse in the future if COVID-19 were to hit Arakan.

Stop war and internet shutdown

Thus, let us say: Stop the war and internet shutdown to fight against the COVID-19 in Arakan. Your participation is our power. Your concentration is our courage. Your word is our want.

Kyaw Lynn is currently a postgraduate student taking his master’s degree in political science at the University of Yangon, Myanmar. He is the chairperson of Political Science Association (University of Yangon) as well as the principal officer at Arakan Students Union (Universities-Rangoon).