UN special rapporteur says blackout has led
to rights violations and a ‘clearance operation’ was taking place
By Jacob
Goldberg and Cape Diamond
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Rakhine childern play
near a telecommunications tower at Sat Yoe Kya Ward
in Rakhine state, Myanmar
Photograph: Nyunt Win/EPA
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More than a million people in Myanmar’s
conflict-ridden Rakhine state have been plunged into an information blackout
three days after authorities ordered telecommunications companies to stop
providing internet services to the area.
Rights groups have condemned the move as
threat to civilians’ safety.
The shutdown came with no warning on 21 June,
one day after Myanmar’s ministry of transport and communications ordered four
companies to temporarily suspend mobile internet services to nine townships in
northern Rakhine state and southern Chin state.
The military has been clashing throughout the
year in the region with Arakan Army (AA) insurgents, who want political
autonomy for Rakhine Buddhists.
The clashes have displaced 30,000 civilians
in the last six months, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs. The area also saw the systematic expulsion of 730,000
Rohingya Muslims starting in 2017, which UN investigators say the military
perpetrated with genocidal intent.
The AA are a more formidable force than the
fighters claiming to represent the Rohingya and have inflicted historically
higher death tolls on the military.
The ministry’s directive allows it to suspend
telecommunications services “when an emergency situation arises”. Soe Thein,
ministry’s permanent secretary, told local media on Monday that “internet
service will resume when the peace and stability are restored to the region”.
Only one of the four telecommunications
operators has publicly acknowledged the internet blackout. Telenor said in a
statement on Friday that it “has been asking [the ministry] for further
clarification on the rationale for the shutdown and emphasised that freedom of
expression through access to telecoms services should be maintained for
humanitarian purposes, especially during times of conflict.”
The statement pointed out that voice and SMS
services have not been affected by the shutdown.
But rights groups have criticised the
shutdown as threat to civilians who are trapped in the conflict zone, which has
long been closed-off to journalists and foreign humanitarian organisations.
“Civilians living in conflict need to access information, and this information
can often be lifesaving. People trapped in Rakhine state won’t be able to
access information, express themselves or reach their loved ones,” said Berhan
Taye, a campaigner for the digital rights group Access Now.
“This shutdown is expected to disrupt
humanitarian efforts directed toward this conflict. Moreover, because of these
shutdowns, it would be difficult to expose the real effect of the conflict on
civilians and the actions of the warring parties,” she told the Guardian.
Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on the
situation of human rights in Myanmar, said the blackout had already led to
rights violations.
“I am told that the Tatmadaw is now
conducting a ‘clearance operation’, which we all know by now can be a cover for
committing gross human rights violations against the civilian population.”
Zaw Zaw Htun, secretary of the Rakhine Ethnic
Congress, which documents civilian casualties and provides humanitarian relief
services, said it was now impossible to collect or verify news.
“The [civilian] government is supporting the
actions of the military. Since they are a democratic government, they should
think about the rights of the people,” Zaw Zaw Htun said.
On Monday, 21 Myanmar-based civil and digital
rights organisations released a statement demanding an end to the shutdown and
a revision of the Telecommunications Law in compliance with UN Security Council
resolutions “identifying uninterrupted internet access as a fundamental enabler
for the enjoyment of human rights”.
To some observers, the internet blackout
portends a spike in the scale of the bloodshed in Myanmar’s war against the AA,
in which recent military atrocities include the killing of six Rakhine state
villagers in captivity.
“This is just like the Saffron Revolution in
2007,” said Myanmar Press Council member Zayar Hlaing, referring to democratic
uprisings that were brutally crushed by the previously ruling military junta.
“They shut down connections and killed the monks as foreign reporters were
struggling to get information out of the country.”
