3/24/26, 1:25 PM Five Years After Coup, Myanmar’s Digital Authoritarianism Enters New Phase | TechPolicy.Press PERSPECTIVE Five Years After Coup, Myanmar’s Digital Authoritarianism Enters New Phase WAI PHYO MINT, DARIKA BAMRUNGCHOK / MAR 13, 2026 Shutterstock Five years after the coup, Myanmar’s junta continues to systematically oppress its own people, carrying out mass arbitrary arrests and killings, imposing internet shutdowns, expanding mass surveillance, enforcing forced conscription, and imposing severe restrictions on both online and offline civic space. Despite these numerous human rights violations, the junta is now seeking legitimacy through militarycontrolled elections. By actively adopting and adapting a model of authoritarian rule that weaponizes digital technology and communications infrastructure against its own population, the junta is fueling the normalization of digital authoritarianism, a model that is increasingly replicated across the region and beyond. This is no longer merely a domestic crisis. It has become part of a growing system of transnational oppression and a testbed for the digital authoritarianism ecosystem. Possibly the worst form of digital authoritarianism Since February 2021, the Myanmar military has turned the digital space into a battlefield through various oppressive measures such as arbitrary internet shutdowns, seizure of communication infrastructure, conducting mass surveillance, online censorship, data extraction, drone deployment, signal jamming, and the criminalization of digital expression. Those measures are no longer temporary or ad hoc. The use https://www.techpolicy.press/five-years-after-coup-myanmars-digital-authoritarianism-enters-new-phase/ 1/4