5/24/22, 7:45 PM Myanmar: Data on internet blocks and internet outages following military coup | OONI Outage on 6th February 2021 Ongoing nightly outages Conclusion Acknowledgements Background In November 2020, the National League for Democracy (NLD) party won the majority in Myanmar’s 2020 general election. The NLD governed Myanmar since winning the 2015 general election, with Aung San Suu Kyi serving as the country’s State Counsellor (equivalent to a prime minister). Aung San Suu Kyi was once seen as a beacon for human rights, having won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 amid 15 years in detention for her pro-democracy struggle. But her inaction in response to the genocide of the Muslim Rohingya people in Rakhine State (which started in October 2016) and her refusal to acknowledge that Myanmar’s military had committed masacres drew international criticism. Observers questioned the credibility of the November 2020 election because of the disenfranchisement of the Rohingya, particularly since Myanmar’s electoral commission cancelled voting in large parts of Rakhine State and other conflict-hit states. Nonetheless, the NLD reported that the latest election was a “landslide” victory and announced that it would be inviting ethnic minority parties to work with it. However, the military-backed opposition disputed the election results, accusing the government of irregularities, and demanding a rerun of the election. The country’s Union Election Commission determined that the election was done “fairly and free”, and that there would not be an election re-run. In response, military leaders in Myanmar seized power in a coup on 1st February 2021, detaining Aung San Suu Kyi and other elected leaders. A night-time curfew has been imposed by the military, and a one-year state of emergency has been declared. Following the coup, the military instructed local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to social media services, and to shut down the internet every night (starting from around 1am local time on 15th February 2021). They have also amended the Electronic Transactions Law, making the spread of “fake news or disinformation” online punishable by up to 3 years in prison. The amended Electronic Transactions Law also includes provisions that the military initially tried to introduce in a new cybersecurity bill drafted shortly after it seized power (but that bill was rejected by stakeholders in Myanmar). These amendments reportedly raise concerns with respect to media freedom, access to information, and online freedom of expression in Myanmar. Methods To investigate the blocking of online platforms, we analyzed OONI measurements collected from Myanmar (similarly to our previous studies in 2020 and 2017). OONI measurements are regularly collected and contributed by users of the OONI Probe app, which is free and open source, designed to measure various forms of internet censorship and network interference. More specifically, we limited our analysis to OONI measurements collected from Myanmar between 1st February 2021 to 25th February 2021 in order to examine how internet censorship has changed in the country following the military coup. We further limited our analysis to OONI measurements pertaining to the testing of social media websites and apps, as well as to the testing of www.wikipedia.org, circumvention tool websites, news media websites (which we reported to be blocked last year), https://ooni.org/post/2021-myanmar-internet-blocks-and-outages/ 2/16