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Since taking power in a coup two years ago, Myanmar’s military junta has suppressed people's rights, cracked down on opposition, and used deadly force against civilians. To enable this, officials have clamped down on people’s communications and rolled out extensive digital surveillance systems. Now, new evidence shows how people are being tracked online and offline simultaneously.
In April this year, the military junta launched one of its deadliest air strikes—killing more than 160 people in the Kanbalu region in a single day. Following the strike, pro-junta Telegram channels systematically doxed people who showed support for the victims on social media, new research shared with WIRED shows. Their names, photos, and other personal information were all shared. Days after the doxing, which also revealed the real-world movements of some of the individuals, people were arrested and imprisoned.
The revelations from Myanmar Witness, a project run by the digital investigations group Centre for Information Resilience, demonstrates how oppressive forces can use people’s social media posts against them. It also shows the intense surveillance faced by people living under Myanmar’s military junta, which includes rolling internet shutdowns and increasing CCTV.
“The military regime and their supporters in Myanmar have weaponized the internet, and doxing has become the tip of the spear—the most aggressive way of intimidating people into silence, online and offline,” says Lu Aye, the lead investigator at Myanmar Witness. The group investigated the incident using open source intelligence techniques, comparing on-the-ground reports with digital evidence.
The air strike hit the village of Pa Zi Gyi, in central Myanmar, on the morning of April 11 as hundreds of people celebrated the opening of a new village building, which had been backed by Myanmar’s pro-democratic National Unity Government. More than 160 people, including women and children, died in the air strike, with reports from CNN and the Guardian describing bodies burning on the ground and medical teams not immediately able to access the site due to planes flying overhead. (A military spokesperson told local press it was targeting “terrorists.”)
In the days following the incident, locals changed their Facebook profile pictures to black images and shared messages of support for the victims. According to reports in the state-owned Myanmar Alin newspaper that were analyzed by Myanmar Witness, 68 people were arrested. (One other arrest was reported by the BBC.) People were arrested for spreading propaganda, cooperating with the pro-democracy government, and public disturbance, according to the analysis. All the of arrests mention people’s social media profiles.
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A series of 19 Telegram channels that appear to support the State Administration Council, the official name of the military junta, shared the personal details and Facebook posts of 20 people who supported air strike victims, the Myanmar Witness research says. Of these, 11 were arrested after being doxed. “Revealing the identities, addresses, and other details of dissenters online is a powerful weapon of suppression,” Lu Aye says. “It leaves individuals vulnerable and intimidated and scares off many more from calling out the military and standing up for democracy.”
It is “highly likely” that the doxing and subsequent arrests are related, Lu Aye says. Messages sent alongside the doxing posts were often similar to the published reasons for the arrest, and the timelines overlap, Lu Aye says. On average, according to the analysis, an arrest happened six and a half days after the doxing post appeared—and in all the instances, the doxing happened at least one day before the arrest. Some people were doxed multiple times, with a total of 59 doxing posts for the 20 people targeted.
Lu Aye says that the researchers have, for the “first time,” found evidence to show the “coordination of online and offline surveillance and suppression.” “We found a shop owner who was named and targeted by seven different pro-junta Telegram channels in one day,” Lu Aye says. “The victim fled her home and shop, movements which were reported on by two of the channels who also called for the shop owner’s arrest and [said] they would continue to report on the individual.”
Myanmar’s embassy in Washington, DC did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about the arrests and doxing. Telegram has also not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing. Doxing on Telegram isn’t new. As WIRED has previously reported, politically motivated doxing is now rife across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. Telegram previously said it moderates the publication of private information on its platform.
Of the 19 Telegram channels highlighted by Myanmar Witness, five no longer appear to exist. The largest has 112,000 followers, while others have more than 10,000. Several seem to still be posting screenshots of people’s Facebook profiles and other personal information, a WIRED review of the channels found.
Manny Maung, a Myanmar researcher at nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch, says that while doxing has been increasing in the country in the past two years, it is hard to document. Maung says she has seen lawyers “go to ground” after having their personal details, as well as their home address and details about family members, spread online. “That is enough to scare people right now,” she says.
Since the military junta took power, people’s digital and physical rights have been eroded, Maung says. There have been frequent internet shutdowns, which keep people from organizing and prevent information from getting out of Myanmar. Several laws have also been amended, giving authorities greater powers, such as the ability to clamp down on civil society and snoop on people’s communications.
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Andrea Calderaro, a senior lecturer in international relations at Cardiff University who has worked on Myanmar’s internet connectivity, says the digital activists he knows have had to flee. “All the telecom operators are under the control of the military junta,” he says. “The connectivity that has been built over the years is clearly now being turned against the population. It’s now a tool that the government is using to control and repress populations.”
Myanmar Witness has verified and mapped more than 750 incidents in the three years from October 2020 to this month. Each one is based on photos or videos that have come out of the country, and researchers have checked their location and the events recorded. These include houses being destroyed and burnt, bombs caught exploding on CCTV footage, and dead bodies on the street.
“Among the litany of atrocities and abuses, the military is abusing their own people’s rights: rights to access of information, the right to organize, the right to live without fear of being attacked or killed,” Maung says. “All of this is happening in a widespread context where the military is clamping down on all aspects of life.”
Myanmar Witness’s Lu Aye says that since the doxing and the wider arrests, at least five of the people apprehended were released within four months of their arrest. These individuals were mostly well-known in local communities, and their release was reported by people on the ground, Lu Aye says. “We do not know the fate of the more than 60 other people who were arrested.”
