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These practices also impede access to lifesaving emergency information. In the context of the devastating 2025 Sagaing Earthquake, connectivity blackouts hindered family tracing and coordination with aid providers.3 Arbitrary arrests by the junta based on the online expression of dissent, including through social media posts, remain commonplace in Myanmar. Between 2022 and 2024, Data for Myanmar reported nearly 1,500 arrests for anti-junta content on Facebook, TikTok, and Telegram, with additional arrests triggered following the junta's scanning of users' private messages.4 Citizens face intrusive biometric tracking in the form of mandatory e-IDs, facial recognition at checkpoints, and AIenabled monitoring that links online behaviour to users' physical identities.5 Information revealed by the Norwegian broadcaster NRK in August 2025 shows how collaboration between the military junta and telecommunications companies can be deadly. According to leaked documents on the conduct of Norwegian telecoms company Telenor following the military's coup attempt, 1,300 mobile customers had their traffic data handed to the junta or their phones blocked, with 500 customers at immediate risk of arrest. Documents also contained statements by the junta that it would use information from Telenor to arrest and sentence people to prison terms of between three and seven years. Telenor data transfer relating to phone usage and location has been linked to the arrest and subsequent execution of pro-democracy activists Jimmy and Phyo Zeyar Thaw, which amounted to crimes against humanity.6 As the junta prepares for a sham election, it is intensifying its repression. In January 2025, the junta enacted a cybersecurity law that provides it with extensive control over access to information.7 The law introduces unchecked measures for the military junta to control internet content and applications, and surveil user activities.8 The law mandates that internet service providers store user data for up to three years and includes penalties for disseminating disinformation and rumours which could lead to fines or imprisonment for individuals and digital service providers, a serious breach of human rights.9 On July 29, 2025, the junta then enacted a law to protect military secrets, which also attempts to control information amid defections from the junta and whistleblowers in its ranks. The law prescribes life imprisonment or the death penalty for the transfer of military secrets.10 As part of its illegal coup attempt and ahead of its planned sham election, the military junta dissolved the so-called State Administration Council and replaced it with State Security and Peace Commission (SSPC) on July 31, 2025. Since its 4

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Silk Road of Surveillance: The role of China's Geedge Networks and Myanmar telecommunications operators in the junta's digital terror campaign

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Burmese
English

Topic

Digital Rights
Digital Surveillance
Internet Restrictions
Military Coup

Author(s)

Justice for Myanmar

Date Published: Sep 9, 2025

Abstract: A new leaked dataset reveals the Chinese company Geedge Networks’ business in Myanmar and exposes a significant number of telecommunications companies that are implementing sophisticated surveillance and censorship technology on behalf of the illegal Myanmar military junta. The leaked dataset offers detailed insights into the inner workings of Chinese internet surveillance and censorship technology that is exported to Myanmar by a company that frames its work as associated with China's Belt and Road Initiative. The dataset has been reviewed by a coalition of media and non-governmental/civil society organisations through the Great Firewall Export project made up of Amnesty International, InterSecLab, the Globe and Mail, Paper Trail Media, Tor Project, DER STANDARD, and Follow The Money. The Internet in Myanmar since the military’s February 2021 illegal coup attempt is among the most restricted in the world. The rolling out of a commercialised version of China’s Great Firewall gives the junta unprecedented access to and control over the online activities of 33.4 million internet users in Myanmar. Notably, the hardware, software and support provided by Geedge Networks to the Myanmar military junta enables the tracking of network traffic at the individual level and can identify the geographic location of mobile subscribers in real time by linking their activity to specific cell identifiers (cell IDs). As such, the junta has an enhanced capability to effectively track down, arrest, torture and kill human rights defenders, journalists and revolutionary forces across the country. The military junta can do so with the direct assistance of telecommunications companies in Myanmar exposed in the dataset – including ATOM (formerly Telenor Myanmar), Mytel, Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), Ooredoo Myanmar, Frontiir, StreamNet , Golden TMH Telecom, Internet Maekhong Network (IM-Net), Myanmar Broadband Telecom (MBT), Myanmar Telecommunication Network (MTN), Campana, Global Technology Group and China Unicom – that are integral to the set-up of a national firewall for the Myanmar junta. This investigation into the business dealings of Geedge Networks with the Myanmar junta builds on a June 2024 report by Justice For Myanmar into how Geedge was initiating country-wide internet surveillance and censorship through the junta-controlled Information Technology and Cyber Security Department (ITCSD) of the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC). 1 By providing hardware and software to the illegal Myanmar military junta, Geedge may be aiding and abetting in the commission of crimes against humanity, including the acts of torture and killing, carried out by members of the junta within a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population. Further investigation is required on this. In the meantime, Geedge Networks is limiting the rights to freedom of expression, association, and digital movement of the people of Myanmar. For that reason, Geedge Networks should be targeted with international sanctions, and individuals in directive and leadership positions within the company should be investigated for aiding and abetting violations of international human rights laws and potentially also international crimes. Telecommunications companies identified in the Geedge dataset as supporting the junta’s online surveillance machinery should be held to account for the serious risks of online and offline violence, and de facto harms such as arrests, torture and killings, of Myanmar civilians. Geedge Networks is closely affiliated with the Chinese state and export of its systems to Myanmar align with the Belt and Road Initiative. China’s involvement in the mass surveillance and repression of the civilian population in Myanmar is part of a broader pattern in which the Chinese government remains a principal supplier of arms to the Myanmar junta, aiding and abetting the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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Silk Road of Surveillance: The role of China's Geedge Networks and Myanmar telecommunications operators in the junta's digital terror campaign

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