In Myanmar, the junta’s intensifying crackdown on street protesters is mirrored by its growing online restrictions.
In Myanmar, the junta’s intensifying crackdown on street protesters is mirrored by its growing online restrictions.
In the early hours of February 1, the Burmese military seized power in a coup that triggered months of mass protests. Since then, junta security forces have killed more than 550 civilians in crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters, including children.
To try to quell the protests, the junta has imposed increasing restrictions on internet access, culminating in a near-total lockdown starting April 2. This has made it extremely difficult for people to access information, upload videos of the protests or organize themselves. These tactics have also crippled businesses and limited access to medical information during the coronavirus pandemic.
A spokesman for the Burmese junta did not return calls seeking comment. In a March 23 press conference, spokesman Zaw Min Tun said the junta had no immediate plans to ease internet restrictions because the violence was sparked online.
Protesters in Myanmar, who have asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters they were terrified of being cut off from the world, with no way to convey news of the protests or army killings to those outside Myanmar.
“We Burmese are clueless now,” said one young protester. “Myanmar news is about to disappear,” added another.
Internet connectivity
Governments around the world are increasingly using internet restrictions during political crises as a tool to limit freedom of expression and cover up human rights abuses, according to data from digital rights organization Access Now. The United Nations Human Rights Council has condemned such intentional disruptions as a violation of human rights.
“Whenever the internet is shut down during such critical moments, we hear, document or see reports of human rights violations, and that is what is happening in Myanmar,” said Felicia Anthonio, an Access Now activist. “The government is cracking down on protesters to make sure they don’t let the rest of the world know what’s going on.”
After the coup, the junta ordered telecommunications companies to carry out dozens of closures. These outages have targeted mobile and wireless internet, which is the only internet available to most of the country.
Facebook blackouts and targeted restrictions
Before the current internet blackout, the Myanmar junta was continually adding severe restrictions on how people could use it.
By February 4, all of Myanmar’s major internet service providers blocked access to the social media platform Facebook on the orders of the junta. About half of Myanmar’s 54 million population use Facebook, which for many is synonymous with the internet. By the end of the next day, Twitter and Instagram were also blocked. These platforms have been a key tool for organizing and sharing information about the protests.
Over the next two months, the restrictions intensified. Effective April 2, all mobile data and wireless broadband internet have been shut down, cutting off the majority of Myanmar’s population from the internet. Only landline connections remain, to which few people have access.
In addition, the Myanmar junta ordered internet service providers in at least one city, Bago, to share the identities of fixed broadband subscribers, according to two sources and an official government order reviewed by Reuters. Residents in the city of Kalay said on April 5 that the fixed fiber network was down.
Escalation of the suppression of the Internet
Up until Feb. 14, Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor had posted regular updates on the orders it received from the junta. The company has stopped out of concern for its employees, a Telenor spokesman told Reuters.
Slow internet speeds
Even when the internet wasn’t turned off, the slower speeds made it more difficult to use.
Some digital rights groups Reuters spoke to saw these slowdowns as evidence of “throttling,” or intentional government-ordered delays. Others speculated it could be caused by damaged cables or stress on the infrastructure as a side effect of government restrictions.
While the causes are unknown, during periods of low speed, uploading and downloading large amounts of data becomes much more difficult, if not impossible. Video sharing and live streaming – two common tactics of protesters – becomes especially difficult.
Circumvent restrictions
Despite the efforts of the junta, people in Myanmar have found ways around many of these restrictions.
Virtual private networks, or VPNs, create a private tunnel between a device and the Internet. Any information, such as what websites someone is browsing or what files they upload, is encrypted by the VPN and becomes unreadable to others along the information path. This means that Internet service providers cannot know if you are trying to visit a blocked website and will likely let the information pass.
Demand for VPNs skyrocketed after the coup. However, some Myanmar residents told Reuters that they discovered that some of the VPNs they used were later blocked.
Google searches for VPN in Myanmar are increasing
While VPNs can grant access to Facebook or other blocked websites, they don’t work when there’s no internet access and compound slow speeds.
Others in Myanmar have been able to obtain Thai SIM cards, some of which access mobile data through telecom companies that aren’t following shutdown orders. As the latest arrest neared, the groups also shared radio frequencies, offline apps that work without a data connection, and tips for using SMS messaging to communicate without data services.
“Despite the difficulties, citizen journalists and the media are posting in every possible way,” journalist Thar Lon Zaung Htet, 37, told Reuters in February. “The important thing is to show the world what’s going on.”
Visual credits
Opening Photo: Protesters Hold Placards and A Clipping Aung San Suu Kyi’s Image During a Protest Against Military Coup in Yangon, Myanmar | February 15, 2021 | REUTERS/Stringer
Final Photo: Protesters Protest Military Coup, Demand Release of Elected Leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in Yangon, Myanmar | February 6, 2021 | REUTERS/Stringer
Video: Obtained from Reuters
Sources
Internet connectivity and Internet speed data provided by Monash IP Observatory, Monash Business School, powered by KASPR Datahaus
Website/platform blocking data collected from NetBlocks.org and Reuters reports
VPN data provided by Top10VPN.com
Methodology
KASPR Datahaus measures Internet connectivity and speed in Myanmar every hour using a sample of active IP addresses. The sample includes all identifiable IP addresses throughout Myanmar, except for the more densely populated area of Yangon, where more than half of the identifiable IP addresses were randomly sampled. It includes mobile data from cell towers, but is mostly wired and wireless internet connections.
Researchers at Monash University’s IP Observatory calculated an expected connectivity range each hour, based on the number of active connections during non-disruptive service between November 2020 and March 2021. This expected range, which varies according to the time of day and week, was the baseline against which the researchers compared connectivity since the beginning of service outages. They also adjusted the data to account for monthly sampling differences. To illustrate the normal range, Reuters has shown the high midpoint and low midpoint of this expected range.
The researchers used the same five-month period to establish a baseline for Internet speed. They calculated the expected average hourly ping response time, measured in milliseconds, of all IP addresses in the sample. They normalized the data to account for monthly sampling differences and variance in infrastructure quality. Hours with average speeds below the expected range were marked as slow periods.
The hours shown on the graphs are in local time.
Additional reporting of
Fanny Potkin and Nerijus Adomaitis
Edited by
Matthew Tostevin, Kay Johnson, Janet Roberts and Jon McClure
#suppression #Internet #Myanmar
Image Source : www.reuters.com
