In Myanmar, 5G tests in Yangon, but a seven-week web blackout in restive Rakhine

Myanmar ’s military-backed telecoms firm Mytel this week revealed the country had carried out its first successful test of 5G services in Yangon – but elsewhere in the nation an estimated 1 million people were entering their seventh consecutive week without the internet.

Residents of nine townships across western Rakhine and Chin states have been without web access since June 21. Authorities said the move was to prevent separatist group Arakan Army (AA) from organising, but regular clashes between the rebels and Myanmar’s military have continued.

Despite the ban, AA-linked online accounts have remained active, with users turning to Twitter and other platforms to organise and raise funds, leaving ordinary residents to bear the brunt of the blackout.

Everyone from small business owners to students has been hit, according to trade and community organisations.

She warned that the military could also use the internet block to hide human rights violations: “As young people in Rakhine, we should not let this go.”

A Rohingya refugee documents decades of horrors as a member of Myanmar’s persecuted ethnic minority

A coalition of groups that includes the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business and Myanmar Information Communication Technology for Development Organisation expressed concern about the ability of the government to protect civilians living amid the fighting.

Rakhine and Chin, in Myanmar’s west, were in 2017 the locations for many of the worst atrocities committed by the military against the country’s Rohingya minority.

The United Nations has said more than 35,000 residents of Rakhine have been displaced so far this year due to fighting, though local media have estimated the number may be higher than 50,000.

Activists have condemned the shutdown as a tool of authoritarian governments and said it degraded the integrity of the nation’s nominally democratic regime, which is led by former human rights icon Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party.

Matthew Bugher, head of the Asia programme at information freedom NGO Article 19, said mobile internet access was essential to allow communities to report on and mitigate human rights abuses in conflict zones. “The danger to local communities in Rakhine and Chin states cannot be overstated,” he said.

How China buys influence with Myanmar’s ruling party through boozy dinners and shopping sprees

The AA has for the past decade been fighting for independence for the Arakan people, a Buddhist Rakhine ethnic group. But the two states have also seen extensive violence between the military and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a fringe militant group which claims it fights for the marginalised Muslim minority.

The block on telecoms services could also spook major foreign investors such as China, which has an interest in the region’s stability. An oil and gas pipeline runs from Rakhine’s Kyaukpyu port to a refinery at Kunming in Yunnan province. The first successful test of 5G services on July 31 used equipment from Chinese tech giant Huawei. Nevertheless, since the shutdown began, the two nations have signed deals to build five China-backed hydropower plants in Chin.

However, he added, “China looks at Myanmar not just through an economic lens, but also a political one. Beijing wants Myanmar to be stable to safeguard the security of China’s southwest frontier”.

The United League of Arakan, the AA’s political wing, late last month issued a statement welcoming development projects in Rakhine and Chin states, including China’s deep seaport, the Kyaukpyu Special Economic Zone. It called them “constructive”. Top-ranking members of the AA live in Kachin state, near the Chinese border.

In Myanmar’s Mandalay, a doctor turned politician is using tech to plot the end of bureaucracy

The country is no stranger to living without the web. In 2007, then under the rule of the military, Myanmar pulled the plug amid widespread protests led by Buddhist monks known as the Saffron Revolution.

Experts said cutting access would not do anything to boost the already declining image of Suu Kyi’s administration, which has faced international condemnation for its treatment of the Rohingya and the imprisonment of journalists.

“The government has repeatedly demonstrated it will not hesitate to use a heavy hand to control discourse and the flow information,” said Bugher from Article 19.

Thinzar Shunlei Yi said the shutdown was evidence the state had yet to achieve its democratic goals. “We have declared that this is a democratic state now, so our target should be to fulfil the rights of citizens, but we’re not there yet.”

Clashes with the AA have continued despite the blackout. Local media reported that the AA had fired rockets at navy boats anchored off Rakhine, and the UN said the army had used helicopters to attack Minbya township on June 19.

Though mobile communication technology arrived late to Myanmar, an estimated 90 per cent of the country’s mobile phone users have smartphones, which can be bought for as little as US$20.

Fewer than 10 per cent of the population had mobiles at the end of 2012. When the market opened to foreign telecoms firms in late 2013, SIM card prices dropped, resulting in what Ei Myat Noe Khin, who works on digital rights at Myanmar Tech Accountability Network, called “an incredible growth in connectivity”.

“What’s really striking about Myanmar is the speed at which the country has been connected,” she wrote in a blog post.

Mytel has said it expects the government to allow telecoms companies to launch 5G services in 2020. Most people use 3G and 4G but many face limited data access.

US bans Myanmar military chief Min Aung Hlaing and three other officers over Rohingya ‘ethnic cleansing’

The country’s main providers are Qatar-backed Ooredoo, Norway’s Telenor, local company MPT Myanmar, and Mytel, which is backed by the military and Vietnam’s Ministry of Defence.

Last month a UN fact-finding mission issued a statement calling on the international community to cut ties with Mytel and other Myanmar military-backed companies.

Army spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun in July said the military had not played any role in the decision to disable internet services.

Thinzar Shunlei Yi saw no end in sight to the web restrictions, and said even members of Rakhine’s state parliament had not had their questions answered.

“There is no clear answer on why this happened,” she said.

Article 19’s Bugher said the seven-week shutdown “underscores the degree to which the Myanmar government has completely abandoned its human rights obligations”. ■