5/24/22, 7:56 PM Myanmar: World's Longest Internet Shutdown Ruins Lives | Time At the time, I had never traveled farther than 20 miles from my village. But Try TIME at half price Only THB134.50 per month when I bought my first cell phone and SIM card I could see images of distant places and access international news sites for the first time. I realized how little I knew about the world. Thanks to the internet, my childhood friend Nyi Htay and I dreamed of new opportunities for ourselves. We vowed to study abroad and return to open a school in our township. Instead, in December 2018 I took a bumpy 24-hour bus ride to Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, to continue my education. Nyi Htay stayed to work on his family’s farm. Our lives have continued to diverge since, due in part to the world’s longest internet shutdown. Today, as I advance my studies of political science, Nyi Htay’s hopes are diminishing under government-imposed restrictions and escalating conflict. Read More: Burma’s Transition to Civilian Rule Hasn’t Stopped the Abuses of Its Ethnic Wars Violence has long scarred my home state. When I was in high school, intercommunal riots erupted between the Buddhist Rakhine community to which I belong and the Muslim Rohingya, resulting in mass displacement, primarily of Rohingya communities. Rakhine again caught global attention in 2017 when the military committed a campaign of arson and violence against the Rohingya, sending more than 740,000 fleeing across the border to Bangladesh. I strongly condemn these atrocities, for which Myanmar is now facing charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice. Since late 2018, another conflict has flared—this time between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group fighting for greater autonomy. It is the most recent of more than seven decades of civil war in Myanmar, as various ethnic groups have sought self-determination. In the last two years, this conflict alone has displaced over 240,000 civilians and hundreds have been wounded or killed by gunshots, landmines and airstrikes, according to a local civil society group. As the military turned its attention toward my ethnic group, the government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi imposed an internet blackout on nine townships. Beginning on June 21, 2019, it affected more than 1.4 million people living in the middle of a conflict zone. https://time.com/5910040/myanmar-internet-ban-rakhine/ 2/4