By Joe Freeman, Amnesty International’s Myanmar Researcher, and Aung Naing Soe, Burmese journalist and filmmaker
One morning last November, Bee Kyal’s phone pinged with a message about a fighter jet taking off from a military base in central Myanmar’s rural Sagaing region. Reacting quickly, the resistance fighter picked up a walkie-talkie and shouted into it, telling civilians to “stay alert!”
Bee Kyal’s words traveled through a network connected to speakers in a nearby village without internet. There was implicit urgency: The plane that was spotted was identified as a Russian-made Yak-130, which can reach its target in minutes.
More than 7,000 civilians have been killed since the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, many of them in the heartland of Sagaing, where flat plains stretch for miles. In this realm of contested territories, conflict among the military and armed resistance groups continues unabated. The internet is a key part of the fight. Myanmar’s military has restricted internet access in conflict areas, with an estimated 131 townships either fully or partially blocked.
Such cuts to internet access are considered disproportionate under international human rights law, violating rights to freedom of expression and information. Some communities in Myanmar have experienced them for years. Many people now rely almost entirely on Starlink, the satellite internet provider owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, as a workaround. Schools, humanitarian groups, hospitals, media, human rights researchers, and resistance fighters have few other options.
Read the full article in Foreign Policy
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