change of name to SSPC on July 31, the junta has further intensified its campaign
of terror against the people, with indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling, arbitrary
arrests, torture and the destruction of whole communities.
Digital surveillance and censorship is now increasing as part of the junta's attempts
to hold a sham election in December. An “election” protection law it passed in July
carries the death penalty and has already resulted in the arrest of Nay Thway, a
resident of Taunggyi, for criticising the junta's "election" in a Facebook post.11
The junta's online and offline terror campaign has been enabled by the Chinese
government and companies, and their complicity is only deepening. Chinese
companies are the junta's main arms suppliers. This includes state-owned
enterprises that continue to supply the Myanmar military with weapons,
maintenance, and the repair and overhaul of weapon platforms. This support has
continued unabated since the attempted coup in February 2021 and has included
deliveries to all branches of the Myanmar armed forces: land, air and navy.
Myanmar military personnel are also being trained, including through scholarships
provided by Chinese state-owned arms companies, at numerous defence-oriented
universities and engineering schools affiliated with the Peoples' Liberation Army.
On 22 October 2024, the Myanmar junta formed a working committee to prepare a
memorandum of understanding with the Chinese government for the creation of a
new joint venture security firm to "handle the import of weapons and special
equipment, including communications devices and restricted tools," showing that
the supply of weapons, equipment and technology is only continuing.12
In the telecommunications front, no company has been more important for the
junta's attempts to control and surveil the internet than China's Geedge Networks,
which has sold the junta a commercialised version of China's "Great Firewall".
Using a new leak of documents from Geedge Networks, Justice For Myanmar has
investigated the extent of Geedge Networks’ collaboration with the military junta,
and the telecommunications companies operating in Myanmar that have joined the
junta's country-wide online surveillance and censorship regime.
The Geedge dataset has been reviewed by a coalition of media and nongovernmental/civil society organisations through the Great Firewall Export project.
The coalitions is made up of InterSecLab,13 which provided support on the
technical aspects of the collaboration, hosted the research platform and made the
Geedge dataset searchable, Amnesty International,14 the Globe and Mail, Paper
Trail Media, Tor Project, DER STANDARD and Follow The Money. This
collaboration has resulted in the publication of reports and articles outlining Geedge
5