INTERNET SHUTDOWNS IN 2023 have endured unrelenting attacks, both physical and digital.139 The military has complete control of the country’s telecommunications network and has systematically used internet shutdowns all across the country to facilitate war crimes and crimes against humanity.140 With the support of #KeepItOn coalition partners, we identified at least 37 shutdowns in Myanmar in 2023. However, this number only represents events that could be independently verified through news reports, information from partners, and confidential sources in Myanmar. This verification process has become increasingly challenging. The limited information authorities made available in previous years has become even more scarce as decision-making around shutdown implementation becomes more decentralized; continued escalations in violence, displacement, and crackdown on digital rights activists make the work of documentation dangerous and difficult; and the continued degradation of infrastructure has made it even more challenging to parse the specific cause of certain outages. Despite these constraints, the data available illustrates unrelenting, targeted disruptions during active conflict across the country in 2023, with only one of the 14 states or regions around the country, Ayeyarwaddy, not impacted by a shutdown. Before 2023, internet shutdown orders came from the central government in Naypyitaw and often impacted many townships at once. However, the junta has since decentralized decision-making around when and where shutdowns are deployed, allowing local officials to more specifically target shutdowns in real time to align with military operations and troop movements, more effectively keeping communities in the dark. Out of the 37 shutdowns documented in 2023, 31 shutdowns began in 2023, with 20 ordered by local authorities and affecting a single township or village and 11 impacting multiple townships or entire states. The remaining six shutdowns were still ongoing after orders from central authorities in 2021 31 and 2022. These localized shutdowns were more erratic, with authorities reportedly cutting off access when the military moved into villages seemingly chosen at random and burning them down.141 They were also more difficult to document, both because less data is available to measure and verify hyperlocal shutdowns and because decentralized decisionmaking means more actors with less visibility. Additionally, reports of leaked documents show that the use of signal jammers is now a central part of the junta’s military strategy.142 Community reports have documented the repeated use of scouting aircraft equipped with jamming devices ahead of military operations, and although we can’t distinguish which shutdowns were caused by these devices, many of the shutdowns we recorded took place during air strikes targeting residential areas and appear consistent with this type of jamming. At least 11 shutdowns in Myanmar in 2023 were tied to documented grave human rights abuses or war crimes, many of which include bombardments and airstrikes targeting civilians in residential areas. In places like Rakhine State where the military has imposed strict blockades, fuel provisions for generators running telecommunications services were cut off, leaving people with little or no access to information while food, water, and other essentials were already in short supply, and with no access to mobile cash transfer apps needed to purchase what limited supplies were left.143 In many of Myanmar’s conflict zones where shutdowns are ongoing as a result of infrastructure damage, restrictions on movement mean telecommunications providers are unable to dispatch employees to make repairs.144 Other restrictions included reported throttling, website blocking, and virtual private network (VPN) bans, all of which continue to make the internet in Myanmar limited, unreliable, and increasingly censored on top of the ongoing and targeted shutdowns.145 139 Access Now (2024). The world must bring down Myanmar's digital iron curtain. https://www.accessnow.org/press-release/ third-year-myanmar-coup/ 140 See, e.g., Access Now (2022). Internet shutdowns shroud and facilitate brutality of Myanmar junta's airstrike in Hpakant township. https://www.accessnow.org/press-release/myanmar-internet-shutdown-hpakant/ 141 Radio Free Asia (2022). Myanmar military said to kill hundreds in Sagaing, Magway after blocking internet. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/internet-09282022162550.html/ 142 Supra note 67. 143 Supra note 8; see also Narinjara (2024). MPT and Mytel Phone Lines Disrupted in Some Rakhine State Townships Due to Fuel Shortages Impacting Cell Towers. https://www.narinjara.com/news/detail/657762eb30a7ecc1ceb008cd/ 144 Ibid. 145 OHCHR (2022). Myanmar: UN experts condemn military’s “digital dictatorship”. https://www.ohchr.org/en/pressreleases/2022/06/myanmar-un-experts-condemn-militarys-digital-dictatorship/; Article 19 (2023). UN: Myanmar junta tightens its grasp on online spaces. https://www.article19.org/resources/un-myanmar-junta-tightens-its-grasp-online-spaces/; VOA News (2023). How Myanmar’s Junta Uses Telecom Companies to Target Journalists. https://www.voanews.com/a/how-myanmar-s-junta-uses-telecom-companies-to-target-journalists/7096082.html/