the military to gaslight the public, obscuring censorship under the guise of technical failure. Such censorship can for example be seen in the blocks facing media websites. Blocking targeted at the independent media By the time the 2025–26 elections were officially announced on 28 August 2025, the military had spent five years trying to isolate the vast majority of the public from the free information ecosystem online. Prior to the start of the election campaign, the military-controlled infrastructure already obstructed 79% of all of the public’s direct attempts to access the websites of Myanmar’s largest independent media. Given that there were approximately 24 million people in Myanmar with internet access, this represents many thousands of attempts to reach the independent media blocked daily.6 For the public, circumventing these blocks became a high-risk, high-cost endeavour. Maintaining access to the independent media required the regular download and installation of new VPNs in a constant game of whack-a-mole with the censors blocking the different applications as they became popular. It also required the payment of exorbitant data charges doubled by the military after the coup with the immediate effect of widening the digital divide.7 Furthermore, in addition to the technical difficulty and cost, the physical risk of accessing the independent media was also high. Security forces at checkpoints routinely violated privacy rights by searching devices for evidence of independent media access to extort bribes or justify arbitrary arrests. This environment of suppression also placed independent media outlets in a situation of permanent crisis. Most media, operating from exile on shoestring budgets, were forced to divert precious editorial resources toward larger IT teams and technical workarounds simply to ensure their content could reach a fraction of their audience. Blocking escalation during the election countdown During the three-month countdown to the election, the blocking of large independent media websites surged from 79% to 93%. A 14% increase over three months suggests that millions of additional people were affected, losing access to the 6 Reliably quantifying affected individuals requires accurate visitor numbers for each outlet. Approximately 44% of the 54 million population have the capacity to access the internet and it is likely that many check the news daily. Freedom House (2025), “Myanmar”. 7 Free Expression Myanmar (2021), “Military violations of free expression timeline”. Page 7 of 17