Laws and Policies With the ongoing military clearance operations in the area, UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee expressed concerns that the internet shutdown would be used as cover for committing gross human rights violations against discriminated civilian populations (Article 19, 2019). Due to push-back from human rights advocates domestically and internationally, the NLD government amended the Telecommunications Law in 2017. The government claimed that the amendment would enhance clarification capabilities and reduce the vague nature of the law’s wording. Despite some minor re-working of a number of clauses, the most contentious clause, Section 66(d), remained largely intact. The serious potential for this law to be abused by authorities therefore remained (Free Expression Myanmar, 2017a). Since the coup on 1 February 2021, after proclaiming a state of emergency, the military has invoked Section 77 of the Telecommunications Law to impose a combination of internet shutdowns and curfews, blocking access to social media platforms and disabling mobile data throughout the country. By 5 February, according to internet watchdog organisation NetBlocks, social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp were inaccessible across all telecommunication service providers (NetBlocks, 2021). This would soon be followed by a nationwide internet curfew and disablement of mobile data connection. 2d. Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens In 2017, the NLD and military enacted the ‘Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens’, known locally as the ‘Privacy Law’. The law was officially formulated to strengthen Article 357 of Myanmar’s 2008 8 Constitution on Privacy and Security (Burma Library, 2008). It provided more concrete provisions on physical privacy and security in the case of citizen abodes, and also gave citizens further protection from authorities when filing lawsuits, as there had been previous cases of stalking and intimidation. In relation to digital privacy however, the law did not outline clear conduct to prevent data being stored unnecessarily, making it inadequate (Yamin Aung, 2020a; FreedomHouse, 2017). The law additionally criminalised defamation in Article 8(f), whereby “no one shall act in any way to slander or harm [a citizen's] reputation”. Article 10 states that any person found guilty under Article 8(f) “shall be punished with a prison sentence between six months and three years, and a fine between 300,000 and 1,500,000 kyats” (Free Expression Myanmar, 2017b). Consequently, this specific article was widely abused, particularly by powerful individuals and political incumbents, to sue journalists and activists critical of them. There were over 110 lawsuits of this nature from 2017 to 2020, until minor amendments were made in 2020 to curtail this abuse (Yamin Aung, 2020b; Myanmar Responsible Business, 2020). Article 10 of the Privacy Law is not aligned with international human rights standards, specifically the ICCPR, which encourages state parties not to criminalise defamation and be mindful of doing so, with regards to freedom of expression. Under Article 19, the use of criminal sanctions should only be countenanced for the most serious of cases and imprisonment is never an appropriate punishment (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2011).9 Major concerns were raised amongst civil society organisations as Myanmar did not have, and currently still does not have in 2021, any comprehensive legislation for online data protection and privacy. There was therefore major pushback from international watchdogs and local civil society organisations, in spite of promises from the government that the data would only be used to ensure that people were not registering with a fake identity (Chau, 2019). 09 6 8 Burma Library is a free, non-commercial, open, multi-source, searchable, online research library focused on Myanmar. It grew out of the documentation on Myanmar provided from 1987 to the UN, ILO and other international bodies by the Burma Peace Foundation. 9 These standards are well treated in the authoritative General Comment Number 34 of the Human Rights Committee: https://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/docs/gc34.pdf