Myanmar: Outline of Rules Affecting Freedom of Expression or threat of force, whether from an external source, such as a military threat, or an internal source, such as incitement to violent overthrow of the government.3 International human rights law has sought to keep national security and public order restrictions on freedom of expression within their proper bounds in three key ways. First, in line with the "provided for by law" part of the test for restrictions, they have called for relevant concepts to be defined clearly and narrowly. This is of particular importance in the realm of national security in view of the tendency of legislators to rely on overbroad and vague terms which lend themselves to abuse. Terms such as “national security,” “extremism” and “incitement to hatred” should be clearly and narrowly defined, while inherently vague notions like “information security” and “cultural security” should not be used at all as a justification for restricting freedom of expression.4 Second, it is accepted that individuals may only be punished on grounds of national security when they acted with the intent to undermine security. This not only provides appropriate protection for freedom of expression, but it also accords with basic due process guarantees, which hold that one can only be punished for a crime where one acted with the requisite intent. Third, and most importantly, there needs to be a very close nexus between the speech and the risk to national security or public order. Absent this requirement, the risk of abuse of these sorts of provisions is very great, because authorities can claim there is a very general risk in relation to a wide swath of expression. This nexus requirement is reflected in Principle 6 of the Johannesburg Principles on National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information, which provides, in pertinent part: Subject to Principles 15 and 16 [which further limit restrictions], expression may be punished as a threat to national security only if a government can demonstrate that: ... (b) it is likely to incite such violence; and (c) there is a direct and immediate connection between the expression and the likelihood or occurrence of such violence. In exceptional circumstances, States may derogate from freedom of expression during a state of emergency. However, they must do so only “to the extent strictly required by the Prepared by a group of experts convened by the London-based NGO ARTICLE 19 and adopted on 1 October 1995, Principle 2(a), https://www.article19.org/data/files/medialibrary/1803/joburgprinciples.pdf. 4 Special Rapporteurs for Promoting Freedom of Expression, 2018 Joint Declaration on Media Independence and Diversity in the Digital Age, 2 May 2018, para. 3(f), https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Opinion/JointDeclaration2May2018_EN.pdf. 3 The Centre for Law and Democracy is a non-profit human rights organisation working internationally to provide legal expertise on foundational rights for democracy. 5