World leaders must open their ears and commit to meaningful action
By Sai Arkar in Nikkei Asia
While resistance fighters are confronting regime soldiers in Myanmar’s many active conflict zones, the internet has become a separate battlefield where the fight to expose the military government’s daily brutality is raging. For Myanmar- based human rights defenders like myself, navigating the arbitrary restrictions on internet access is a daily struggle beset with nuanced dangers — with one false move resulting in years behind bars.
Like most people, I reach for my phone before anything else in the morning. However, unlike most people, before reading messages and updates received overnight, I assess whether the day will be a day with or without internet access. This practice has become routine since the morning of the coup back in February 2021. From that day until now, the regime has regularly interrupted or entirely suspended internet access in large swaths of Myanmar in an effort to hide their crimes and disrupt resistance movements.
If I do have internet access, engaging in what many would consider mundane work tasks demands the utmost preparation. Joining a video call, for instance, means establishing new accounts and connecting to a virtual private network (VPN) — all necessary steps to hide my identity. So far, I have remained undetected. Others haven’t been so lucky.
Even subtly showing solidarity with communities terrorized by the regime’s airstrikes can land you in serious peril. In April last year, the military arrested several prominent Facebook users, including a veteran journalist, an actress and a famous singer, merely for turning their profile pictures black following an airstrike that reportedly killed 168 people, including 40 children, in central Myanmar. The regime held the activists in a secret interrogation center for several days and charged them under Section 505A of the Penal Code, a provision it regularly uses to target online critics.
The regime’s attack on online freedom not only affects human rights defenders and celebrities but also imposes significant hardship on ordinary people throughout the country. I recently spoke to a 24-year-old delivery driver stopped by soldiers and traffic police in the city where he works. The soldiers forced him to unlock his phone and found a VPN app installed.
“What should we do?” a soldier asked the delivery driver. “Should we arrest you, or will you give us money?”
Terrified, the delivery driver gave the soldiers what little money he had on him and was let go.
I asked how this experience made him feel. “I don’t feel safe,” he told me. “I feel as if we are being watched.”
Due to their ability to provide online anonymity, VPNs have consistently drawn the ire of a regime desperate to hide its crimes from the rest of the world. A draft decree that recently came to light proposes restrictions on VPNs and imposes harsh penalties for those found using them. It’s not a coincidence that this ban comes at a time when regime forces are suffering major battlefield losses at the hands of popular resistance forces and when, in response, regime jets and artillery units have been bombarding civilian communities they consider to be aligned with these resistance forces.
The regime’s efforts to throttle and disrupt the flow of information certainly hinders the work of human rights defenders, but we are finding new and innovative ways to document crimes. As the brutal crackdowns make it difficult for people to express their hopes and protest in the streets, they turn to the internet and social media as a platform to do so.
Since the coup, my organization, Fortify Rights, has produced seven full-length reports and more than 300 publications covering the regime’s denial of humanitarian aid to civilians, use of human shields, continued genocidal attacks against the Rohingya community, and countless other crimes. We’ve also conducted hundreds of meetings with diplomats and other relevant constituencies. Other groups, including Myanmar-led human rights organizations, have similarly been engaged in excellent work collecting and disseminating evidence of the junta’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor requested an arrest warrant for the head of Myanmar’s military government, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, in late November. Human rights defenders like me consider this a crucial step for Rohingya justice. This move gives survivors hope and reinforces the global commitment to human rights and the rule of law by stating that crimes against humanity and genocide cannot be overlooked.
Last week, ICC member states reviewed the court’s priorities and direction at the annual Assembly of States Parties in The Hague. To support accountability for all communities in Myanmar and investigate and prosecute the regime for international crimes against civilians after the February 2021 coup, Fortify Rights, has been calling for ICC member states to immediately refer the entire situation to the ICC prosecutor under Article 14 of the Rome Statute. Myanmar’s military government is executing, imprisoning, torturing, displacing and killing civilians, actions which amount to crimes against humanity.
Even as someone operating inside Myanmar regime-controlled territory and subject to digital repression on a daily basis, I am still able to do my work as a human rights defender, and so are the hundreds if not thousands of my compatriots, in response to the regime’s crimes since the coup. Despite their best efforts, the military government has so far failed to silence those of us trying to hold it to account. But we cannot hold out forever. I implore world leaders to open their ears and commit to meaningful action on Myanmar.
This article was originally published in Nikkei Asia.