Hell in 2021: Myanmar Under the Military Junta After the Coup Human Rights Day then lost his life a few days later4, is the first journalist killed by the junta during interrogation sessions. Ko Sai Win Aung, editor of the Federal Journal who had taken refuge in May Khi Wah village to continue broadcasting news, was also shot dead by the military in Lay Kay Kaw township, Karen state on December 25.5 Citizen Rights Crumbled by the Amendment of the “Privacy” Law In addition to the frequent internet blackout, the junta issued an amendment of the Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens (2017) (also known as the Privacy Law) which previously had imposed a moderate extent of protection on the freedoms of citizens, as a precursor of violent arrests of the protest leaders and CDM campaigners. On 13 February, the junta chief addressed a statement that read “The stipulation of Sections 5, 7 and 8 of the Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens shall be suspended in accordance with Article 420 of State Constitution,” citing the 2008 Constitution whose legitimacy can no longer be validated due to the 1 February coup d'état whereby the military made the constitution itself drafted for many years illegitimate.6 Some legal provisions of the law can be interpreted as follows: any responsible authorities require minimum of two accompanies who must comprise members of ward or village administrative body or officials if they enter a citizen’s home for the purpose of search, seizure or arrest pursuant to Section 5 of the Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens, no citizen shall be held in detention for more than 24 hours pursuant to Section 7; without an order, permission or warrant in accordance with existing laws, the authority shall not enter a citizen’s home for the purpose of search, seizure or arrest pursuant to Section 8(a), shall not make surveillance or espionage which can affect human dignity of a person on any citizen pursuant to Section 8(b), shall not eavesdrop or intercept any citizen’s communications through any communication devices pursuant to Section 8(c), shall not require demand personal information of any citizens from telecommunications operators pursuant to Section 8(d), shall not open, search, seize or eradicate any citizen’s private correspondence, envelope, package or parcel pursuant to Section 8(e), shall not unjustly interfere with any citizen’s private issues and family issues pursuant to Section 8(f), and shall not unjustly seize or destroy the property lawfully owned by any citizen pursuant to Section 8(g). After the abolishment of the aforementioned legal provisions, the military blatantly acted arbitrary home invasions, arrests without warrant, private surveillance, eavesdropping on the communication devices, demanding the personal information of targeted individuals from telecommunications operators, opening and search of the packages and envelopes, abduction the spouse, family members or close relatives of politicians and activists as hostages, and seizures and seal- 4 Tin Aung Khine. December 14, 2021. ဓာတ်ပံသ ( တင်းေထာက် ကိစ ( း(ိ &ိင ( ် စစ်ေGကာေရးမHာ ေသဆံး( . Radio Free Asia. Available at https://www.rfa.org/burmese/news/freelance-photojournalist-died-in-police-custody12142021141522.html 5 Maung Shwe Wah. December 26, 2021. ေလးေက့ေကာ်တင ွ ် ခံလ ( ေ Iံ နသJ ဂျာနယ်အယ်ဒတ ီ ာ လက်နက်Nကီးထိမန H ် ေသဆံး( . Myanmar Now. Available at https://www.myanmar-now.org/mm/topics/5277 6 February 02, 2021. “စစ်အာဏာသိမ်းမI ဖွဲOစည်းပံအ ( ေြခခံဥပေဒ&Hင့် ညီRွတြ် ခင်းမSHိဟ( ဥပေဒပညာSHငသ ် း(ံ သပ်”. Democratic Voice of Burma. Available at http://burmese.dvb.no/archives/438754 3