Re ea ch and Mea emen Finding This section of the research study provides an overview of the project s research and measurement findings detailing the existence of censorship in Myanmar as well as the surveillance capacity and capabilities of the authorities Ce hi In March 2020 ISPs in Myanmar received a directive from the MoTC ordering them to block 230 websites most of which contained adult or explicit content Media websites however also appeared on the list such as Narinjara News and Development Media Group Both of these organizations were covering the ongoing conflict in Rakhine State at the time Telenor Myanmar a telecommunications subsidiary of the Norwegian Telenor Group published a press release disclosing the government s March 2020 request noting that the company had blocked access to the requested 230 websites by serving a block page Although a list of the blocked websites was not published an OONI report confirmed the DNS based blocking of 174 domains by Telenor Myanmar AS133385 Most of these domains contain adult content but as mentioned many of them include news outlets as well On August 29 2020 Telenor disclosed that the Myanmar government had issued another directive to block the website Justice for Myanmar and three related IP addresses based on Section 77 of the Telecommunications Law The government s directive justified the blocking by asserting that the website in question was circulating fake news and rumors According to international reports the blocked website is for a campaign seeking to collect evidence to expose the vast business network that helps fund oppression in Myanmar Image 1 The la di g age f a bl cked eb i e An OONI analysis conducted between January 1 and July 27 2020 found approximately 200 URLs were blocked in Myanmar Although the majority of these are pornographic websites 41 media websites were also found to be blocked The table below shows the network measurement data for blocked websites that are legitimate and trusted media sources including Mandalay In Depth News KarenNews Narinjara News Development Media Group and Voice of Myanmar As reported by Qurium Media Foundation these sites remained blocked for five additional months OONI