Army chief, president urged to back words with action (and internet access) in Arakan 

By Hnin Nwe 17 Dec 2020

Hnin Nwe | DMG
17 December 2020, Sittwe 

The heads of Myanmar’s civilian and military leadership are being urged to go beyond the felicitous words of their recent Arakan State Day messages to materially better the lives of the state’s residents; for starters, critics say, by restoring internet access to the hundreds of thousands of people who are functionally denied connectivity by the government. 

President U Win Myint and Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing sent messages marking the occasion of Arakan State Day on December 15, the latter saying that the military was striving to address the needs of Arakan’s people, including by providing humanitarian aid, arranging for resettlement and rehabilitation, and fostering regional development. 

In his own message, the president pledged to make strenuous efforts to help Arakan State become a modern and developed state, and to work toward establishing a democractic federal union in future. 

But despite the promising high-level sentiments, the Arakan State Amyotha Hluttaw lawmaker Daw Htoot May wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday: “People in Arakan State want the government and the Tatmadaw to immediately lift restrictions on 4G internet service, rather than sending messages of greeting. Internet access is a fundamental right of citizens. Thus, on behalf of the people, I have requested many times to have internet access [restored] in Arakan State.” 

U Pe Than, the Pyithu Hluttaw MP for Myebon Township, said if the government wanted to make Arakan State a modern and developed state, it needed to back its words with action. 

“The internet restrictions should be lifted to be able to know the people’s difficulties in real time,” he said. “And the declaration by the government that the Arakan Army is a terrorist group should be rescinded to cease fire in the state, and the AA should be invited to the negotiation table. There are so many things to do. The state will be developed only if they do in reality rather than sending their messages of greeting once a year saying what they are doing for Arakan State.”  

Ko Shwe Than Kyaw, information officer for the Mrauk-U Youth Association, said the government is responsible for allowing people to access information in a timely manner at a time when they are facing civil war and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We have to go to the top of a mountain to send an email. It is risky to go to that area amid regional instability. Lifting restrictions on internet access is more useful for the people than sending messages of greeting,” he said, adding that online education was another option denied to many people in Arakan State even as the pandemic has shuttered schools statewide. 

The government imposed an internet shutdown in eight Arakan State townships and Chin State’s Paletwa Township on June 21, 2019, and has provided limited connectivity intermittently in the months since. For most of the affected townships, the situation since August has allowed mobile internet users to connect to a 2G network (in contrast to the 4G networks enjoyed by the rest of Myanmar) that critics say is too slow to execute even basic online functions.