Restriction on Internet Freedom by the Junta
two or more times to make a single call. Even if the call is made, it is relatively hard to catch
well due to the bad connection. It is troublesome to call in urgent cases. Since the access to
transportation is already limited in this place, the internet and phone lines are not working
now”11.
Furthermore, it was said that the junta threatened 15 villages that opposed them to relocate
by distributing the propaganda leaflets in Ayadaw of Sagaing Region, where the internet was
cut off.12 In Myingyan District of Mandalay Region, the junta raided villages, arresting and
torturing villager after shutting down the internet.13
(2) Limits on content (Restricting the contents or expressions of the internet users)
On February 13, the junta blocked the websites of 30 local news media, including Justice for
Myanmar website, and the software of the information sharing chatbot about COVID-19.14
According to Telenor’s public reports, the access to internet protocol (IP) addresses and
URLs were blocked starting from February 9 and consecutively on February 10, 11, 12, 13,
and 14.15
11
(2021, September 20). “အင်တာနက်လိုင်း ြဖတ်ခံထားရတဲ့ ကနီမိနယ်မှာ ဖုန်းလိုင်းပါ ဆက်သွယ်ရ ခက်ခဲ”. Available
at https://web.facebook.com/39218993127/posts/10161371360403128?_rdc=1&_rdr
12
(2021, September 19). “အင်တာနက် ြဖတ်ထားတဲ့ အရာေတာ်က ရွာတချိကို ကိုယ့်အိမ်ကိုယ်ဖျက်ပီး
ေရွေြပာင်းရမယ်လို စစ်ေကာင်စီ သတင်းလင့်”. Available at
https://web.facebook.com/278607422252157/posts/4277796662333193?_rdc=1&_rdr
13
(2021, September 16). “ြမင်းြခံတွင် အင်တာနက် ြဖတ်ပီးေနာက် ေကျးရွာများကို စစ်ေကာင်စီတပ်များ ဝင်စီးပီး
ြပည်သူများကို အကမ်းဖက် ိုက်ှက် ညဥ်းပန်း ဖမ်းဆီးေန”. Available at
https://web.facebook.com/khitthitnews/photos/a.386800725090613/1298949120542431/?type=3&_rdc=1&_rdr
14
Januta, Andrea and Minami Funakoshi. (2021, April 7). “Myanmar internet suppression”. Available at
Myanmar’s internet suppression (reuters.com)
15
Telenor Group. (2021). “Directives from authorities in Myanmar- February- November 2021”. Available at
Directives from authorities in Myanmar - February-November 2021 - Telenor Group
6