94 Dictating the Internet: In similar cases: From 26 November 2019, at least eight other individuals have been sentenced to prison for their activities online.342 Myanmar In Myanmar, the Official Secrets Act 1923 (‘OSA’) – which bans the “collection” or “communication” of information deemed “prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State’ – has been used to penalize journalists who were performing their professional duties,343 and there is a risk it could be used against others, including human rights defenders. Section 3(1)(c) of the OSA penalizes the “obtaining, collection, recording, publishing or communication to any person of any …document or information… calculated to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy” with up to 14 years’ imprisonment where the information is deemed “in relation to the naval, military or air force affairs of the State of in relation to any secret official code”.344 Section 3(2) thereafter states that “it shall not be necessary to show that the accused person was guilty of any particular act” deemed prejudicial to the State and that “notwithstanding that no such act is proved against him, he may be convicted… if it appears his purpose was… prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State”.345 Apart from overbroad provisions under the OSA which do not clarify who an “enemy” is and what “directly or indirectly being useful to an enemy” entails, the OSA lifts any burden of proof from the prosecution to substantiate a charge that a defendant has posed real risk of harm against the interests of the State. This fails to comply with international 2019, Available at: https://the88project.org/profile/191/nguyen-ngoc-anh/ 342 Including Nguyen Chi Vung, Pham Van Diep, Vo Hoang Trung, Doan Viet Hoan, Ngo Xuan Thanh, Nguyen Dinh Khue, Huynh Thi To Nga and Huynh Minh Tam. ICJ communications with partners. 343 The OSA is one of a range of laws which have been misused to target journalists in Myanmar, including the abovenoted Telecommunications Law and Penal Code provisions which deliberately curtail freedom of expression, but also laws which do not pertain to freedom of expression at all, including, for example, the Unlawful Associations Act of 1908, the Aircraft Act of 1934 and the Import-Export Law of 2012. See Human Rights Watch, ‘Dashed Hopes: The Criminalization of Peaceful Expression in Myanmar’, 31 January 2019, Available at: https://www.hrw.org/ report/2019/01/31/dashed-hopes/criminalization-peaceful-expression-myanmar; OHCHR, ‘The Invisible Boundary – Criminal prosecutions of journalism in Myanmar: Report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)’, 11 September 2018, Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23531&LangID=E 344 English translation of Official Secrets Act 1923, Available at: http://freeexpressionmyanmar.org/ wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Official-Secrets-Act-EN.pdf 345 Ibid.