BSR | Human Rights Impact Assessment: Facebook in Myanmar 19 feature of the law is the provision of a process by which local authorities can organize women to have a gap of 36 months between births. There are concerns that this law is directed at controlling the birth rates of the Muslim community, and that it could justify the use of an out-of-force Rakhine state regulation limiting Muslim couples to two children. 53 o The Monogamy Bill (2015) prohibits men and women who are already married from conducting an extramarital affair, and makes no reference to trans or intersex people. This prohibition could constitute an interference with the right to privacy and family. o The Religious Conversion Law (2014) is concerned with the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, and therefore has a noteworthy relationship to other human rights, including the right to freedom of expression, the right to privacy, and the rights of persons belonging to national, ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities. The law has several provisions which are vague or otherwise incompatible with international human rights standards. For example, the vague use of the term “citizen” in this law and in the relevant constitutional article could exclude the minorities that are denied citizenship, including the Rohingya, from the rights and protections enshrined in the law. This troubling legal context, when combined with the widespread use of Facebook and other social media platforms for character assassinations, rumor-spreading, and hate speech against minority individuals, creates an enabling environment for the ongoing endorsement and proliferation of human rights abuse in Myanmar. » An uptick in arrests and prosecutions under existing laws, as well as the enactment of new laws with vague provisions and definitions, implies that the state will increasingly police digital communications and infringe on human rights. International human rights groups have expressed concern at the increase in prosecutions and arrests of journalists and activists in Myanmar. The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar recorded 40 cases in January 2017 prosecuted under Article 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law.54 The 1908 Unlawful Associations Act has not commonly been used against journalists, but in May 2017 three journalists were detained for reporting an event organized by an ethnic armed group, and in October 2017 two community leaders were sentenced for two years for assisting documentation of military damage and allegedly supporting the Kachin Independence Army.55 Several new laws, forthcoming laws, and laws that have been recently reformed are relevant for freedom of expression and social media. The 1872 Evidence Act was amended in 2015 to include electronic records and information as evidence in court, for example. The forthcoming hate speech law (alternatively known as the Interfaith Harmony Law, the Interfaith Harmonious Coexistence Law, or the Protection Against Hate Speech Bill) has been flagged by civil society groups as a risk for widening the power of government censorship, with overbroad definitions of hate speech and the exclusion of protected characteristics required by international human rights law.56 53 Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum, 2015. UN Special Rapporteur, 2018. 55 Human Rights Watch, 2018. 56 Aritcle 19, 2017(a). 54