“It is an addictive app with bullshit, spam, fake news and unverified content,” he said, asking to be referred to by a pseudonym due to fears of official retribution from speaking with the press.

Phuong, 33, describes himself as a social activist, says he’s been routinely harassed by the police for his outreach and has seen friends arrested for expressing views critical of the government. So despite his misgivings about the video-sharing app, he sees cause for alarm in growing threats from Vietnam’s Ministry of Information to ban TikTok if the company refuses to censor what the state deems “toxic” content.

“I think that controlling TikTok can have a lot of impact on freedom of speech. A lot of people use [it] to express their views,” Phuong said. “[Authorities] want to control all the media, communication and information platforms.” 

TikTok went live in Vietnam in 2019 and has soared in popularity since then.

From a choreographed handwashing dance to quell the spread of Covid-19 to the recorded gaffe of Minister of Public Security General To Lam being hand-fed chunks of a nearly $2,000 gold-leaf-encrusted steak by the internet-famous “Salt Bae”, the platform has won the public’s attention.

TikTok now boasts nearly 50 million local users – a number that ranks the socialist state sixth of 10 countries globally with the most on the app, according to research firm DataReportal.

But that success has also caught the eyes of the state, which has promised a probe of the company’s office in Ho Chi Minh City in late May. This comes amidst a recent campaign of dialled-up government rhetoric against the app. Rattled by the flood of unruly content, authorities look ready to tighten their hold over TikTok as the latest step of a decades-long battle to wrangle Vietnamese cyberspace.

At a 6 April news conference, the Information Ministry described the app as a “threat to the country’s youth, culture and tradition” and warned of an outright ban.

A “comprehensive inspection” of the company that began on 15 May is not typical in its scope, said Kent Wong, a partner at business law firm Ho Chi Minh City-based VCI Legal in Ho Chi Minh City. Other large tech platforms, such as Youtube and Facebook, have avoided similar visits by keeping their offices out of the country.

“Having a local office in Vietnam is like wearing a football jersey to be grabbed onto,” Wong said. “This may be an exemplar for other platforms not to establish a presence in Vietnam, or face being a constant target for government inspections and investigations.”

These regular check-ins from officials serve to bolster the government’s tight system of online control. This includes regular crackdowns on activists, journalists and bloggers for “spreading anti-state propaganda” with speech perceived to be critical of authorities.  

The government also makes frequent take-down requests of social-media sites, with the Information Ministry reporting that TikTok has already removed 2.43 million videos uploaded by users in Vietnam in the first quarter of this year.

Future controls could ramp that number up, but domestic concerns may just be a portion of Hanoi’s motivation.

Similar to bans and investigations of TikTok by neighbours in Southeast Asia and beyond, experts say the Vietnamese government could be concerned about data security, national sovereignty and China’s influence over ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company. 

Nguyen Khac Giang, visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said an “all-out attack on TikTok” in the Vietnamese press would likely lean on articles about how the app “corrupts young people, how it wastes their time.”

“[But officials] want to know what TikTok is up to in the Vietnamese market,” Giang said. “They are worried it may promote some content that could supplant information about Vietnam’s national sovereignty or maritime disputes.”

The probe

The ongoing investigation of TikTok’s downtown Ho Chi Minh City office spans eight ministries and agencies digging into the company’s Vietnam operations.

A TikTok Vietnam spokesperson told the Globe by email that an “upcoming planned visit” would include inspections from the Information Ministry, Trade Ministry and the General Department of Taxation.

The inspectors are expected to dig into the company’s content distribution, e-commerce deals, advertisements and tax liability. Officials at the April press conference announcing the investigation said its purpose will be to “evaluate the impact TikTok has and its capacity to abide by the law”.

Despite the tough state rhetoric specifically against the app, TikTok’s spokesperson said the probe was “in line with local law for companies operating in Vietnam, not only TikTok.” 

“We welcome the opportunity to listen and address any concerns, as well as share the progress we’ve made in Vietnam in the past four years,” they stated.

In general, more legal guidelines for tech firms’ operations are incoming. Vietnam’s first comprehensive data privacy law will take effect on 1 July and a draft law on e-transactions is expected to reach the National Assembly this year. 

Enforcing these laws will likely incur new costs on both the state and private businesses alike, said Wong. On the other hand, he added, for measures pointed at online content, the “subjective and arbitrary” guidelines used to identify offending posts could motivate companies to leap into compliance. 

“Being constantly concerned about receiving a ‘knock on the door’ or being banned, social media enterprises like TikTok will need to quickly adjust their activities,” Wong said.  

Dissent and geopolitics

The government’s concerted approach to regulating TikTok has been years in the making.

The internet wasn’t a primary concern for the ruling party until the mid-2000s. But by the early 2010s, authorities were shaken by Vietnamese activists flocking to the internet – especially during the Middle Eastern social-media-connected protests known as the Arab Spring. 

Command of the online space then became a priority, said Giang from ISEAS, and spurred a military push to suppress dissent online – an effort led by the notorious Task Force 47, a reportedly 10,000-member group. This motivation also led to the wide-ranging 2018 Law on Cybersecurity, which attempted to localise international tech platforms while expanding government control of online content.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch Asia Division, said TikTok has not yet become a significant platform for Vietnamese activists. Still, some have taken to the platform to “badmouth” police and to express discontent over land confiscation. 

“TikTok has potential of becoming an important platform to reach out to a big number of young audiences,” Robertson said. “The Vietnamese authorities restrict or even ban anything that poses a potential risk of getting too popular and thus out of control for them.”

But the clampdown on the Chinese-owned TikTok also showcases Hanoi grappling with the threat of “political interference”, Giang said. 

Vietnam and China have a long history of maritime disputes in the South China Sea. Hanoi rejects the “nine-dash line” which shows the sprawling extent of China’s claims in the hotly disputed, resource-rich waters. Any maps shared on TikTok which mislabel Vietnamese islands in the South China Sea, including Hoang Sa and Truong Sa, or show the nine-dash line could be seen as a threat, Giang said.

High sensitivity over maps of China’s nine-dash line has precedent in Vietnam. The government there ordered Netflix to take down an Australian spy-drama which included the nine-dash line in 2021, and the same year there was an uproar over a map on the clothing retailer H&M’s website showcasing China’s disputed maritime claims. 

Worries from the government in Hanoi over China’s potential political interference through curated TikTok content would not be unique. India banned the app in 2020, and Australia and New Zealand have banned it from government devices. The U.S. government officially prohibits state and federal employees from using the platform.

In Singapore, TikTok is only allowed on a “need-to basis” for government employees and Malaysia has banned political advertisements on the site. 

“When I was in [Singapore] in November last year, officials were telling me that they were very aware of some pro-China narratives that have taken hold… and that was coming across in social media apps,” said Hunter Marston, a Southeast Asia geopolitical analyst and PhD researcher at Australian National University. “TikTok would be an easy avenue for that to take hold.” 

Elsewhere in the region, governments have embraced the app for their own purposes. In the Philippines, TikTok played a key role in the campaign of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. – with influencers producing a steady stream of bubbly content revising the authoritarian history of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. 

“[TikTok] is open to Chinese influence inserting subtle messaging and this has been big in the Philippines, especially around Marcos Jr.’s election. TikTok was huge in disseminating misinformation,” Marston added. “[Banning] would be an easy way for Vietnam to prevent that from entering the discourse in Vietnam.”

Moral Panic

Some observers see the threats to ban TikTok as a fearful attempt by authorities to preserve conservative Vietnamese values.

Giang said the TikTok censure fits within Hanoi’s fight against so-called “ideological deterioration”, led by the country’s most powerful figure, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

“TikTok has a huge impact on the younger generation,” Giang explained. “If the Vietnamese government cannot find a way to control it – by frequent reports, by more censorship, maybe by pushing them to promote what they want them to promote – then there will be an issue for national security and losing younger generations.”

A Hanoi-born millennial agreed, declining to give his name for potential repercussions for discussing the government. 

“There is an ongoing moral panic that the state and many nationalists are pushing, banking on the fear that TikTok is ruining our youth and destabilising the nation,” he said, noting the general secretary frequently emphasises “the importance of controlling popular culture.” 

“They fear that the control may be slipping from them, and they do not even have the capacity to moderate this platform. So they do rely on public outrage,” the millennial added. “I’ll be honest, they care more about preserving stability and trust in the party than about protecting youth from hateful ideologies.”

The social activist Phuong surfs past harmful posts on social media but has concerns about the younger generation’s ability to do so. 

Still, he has a bigger issue with the potential of the government to use TikTok to push its own agenda.

“I think the Communist Party will influence TikTok to release news that benefits their party,” Phuong said. “Even [they] will release political fake news to deceive the people.” 

The post Stopping the scroll: Vietnam threatens TikTok ban appeared first on Southeast Asia Globe.

Muhyiddin was prime minister for 17 months between 2020 and 2021, at the height of Malaysia’s battle against the coronavirus, and now leads an opposition coalition against Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s government.

The 75-year-old Muhyiddin was hit with four charges of using his position to obtain bribes totalling $51.4 million (232.5 million ringgit) for his political party Bersatu.

The bribes allegedly came from companies that were given preference for projects financed by the Covid fund.

Each charge carries up to 20 years imprisonment on conviction.

Muhyiddin was also slapped with two charges of money laundering involving about $43,000,00 (195 million ringgit) deposited into Bersatu’s account, according to the charge sheets.

Each of those charges could lead to up to 15 years in jail.

At the Sessions Court on Friday, Muhyiddin pleaded not guilty to all charges and requested a trial.

He was freed on bail but ordered to surrender his passport.

The charges came a day after Muhyiddin was questioned by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and later arrested.

He has denied any wrongdoing and accused Anwar’s ruling coalition of political persecution to discredit him and his party ahead of state elections in July.

MACC launched a probe into the alleged misuse of pandemic funds by Bersatu and froze the party’s bank accounts last month.

Two Bersatu leaders have also been charged with bribery related to the stimulus programme.

Muhyiddin rose to prominence during the tenure of former prime minister Najib Razak, who is now serving a 12-year jail term for corruption linked to the plunder of state investment firm 1MDB.

He fell out with Najib in 2015, when he was sacked after criticising the government over the 1MDB scandal.

Muhyiddin later joined a party set up by former premier Mahathir Mohamad and helped to oust Najib and his party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).

Then in a volte-face typical of Malaysia’s turbulent politics, he joined hands with UMNO again to win enough support to become premier.

© Agence France-Presse

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For more than three years, the treason trial against Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha has simmered in the background of a government campaign to eliminate a key political rival.

On Friday afternoon, the trial finally reached its end at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court. Judge Koy Sao handed down a prison sentence of 27 years “on the charge of collusion with foreigners committed in Cambodia and other places.”

The 69-year-old Sokha was the joint founder of the now-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and had previously started the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, a prominent advocacy group. His work regularly placed him at odds with Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has firmly consolidated power over 38 years of rule. 

The prime minister last year announced his son Hun Manet, a military commander, as his chosen successor, and is expected to stand in a general election this summer. 

“This appalling verdict marks yet another low for political rights in Cambodia, which have been deteriorating since the CNRP’s dissolution in 2017,” stated Naly Pilorge, outreach director of Cambodian rights group Licadho. “Today’s decision makes it clear that civic and political space is closed ahead of the July 2023 National Election.”

Licadho and other local and international watchdogs have denounced the coming polls as a sham contest. Besides the long-running proceedings against Sokha, Pilorge pointed to the prior convictions of 158 former CNRP members and other opposition figures since November 2020. These were the product of five mass trials that also invoked charges of treason, as well as incitement and other crimes.

Arrested in 2017 in a midnight raid involving hundreds of security forces, Sokha had lived in a kind of limbo as his trial experienced long delays. 

First held in a provincial prison, he was eventually transferred to house arrest and finally paroled to some semblance of normal life under restrictions. Though he was already barred from political activity, Sokha met with foreign diplomats at his home and travelled the country for personal business. 

After the Friday verdict, Sokha was immediately taken from the courtroom to his home in the Toul Kork district of Phnom Penh, where he is expected to remain for now under house arrest. The court has barred him from meeting anyone apart from family members, either in-person or digitally, and has also stripped him of his right to vote or run for political office. 

By Friday afternoon, special police units had established a heavy presence around his home and along its street. Masked officers with heavy rifles kept watch on the house, with two diverting traffic away from the area.

Police, including Hun Sen’s bodyguard paramilitary unit, also made a show of strength near the Council of Ministers office and along major roadways.

The trial itself had featured weeks of quarrelling between prosecution and defence over basic procedural issues. 

The state’s case against Sokha claimed he had conspired with an unnamed country, heavily implied to be the U.S., to lead a “colour revolution” in Cambodia to topple Hun Sen. This centred on mass protests against the government in 2013-14 amidst allegations of electoral fraud promoted by CNRP leaders.

Prosecutors’ evidence against Sokha consisted mostly of video and audio clips from speeches he’d made during and around the time of the protests, as well as interviews in which the opposition figure discusses Cambodian politics and support from the U.S., most notably a non-governmental organisation known as the International Republican Institute.

On Friday, U.S. Ambassador Patrick Murphy stated the trial and sentence were based on a “fabricated conspiracy” and represented a “miscarriage of justice”.

Sokha has rejected the charges against him as politically motivated, with his defence attorneys pointing out that members of Hun Sen’s government had also participated in U.S.-backed political training.

“U.S. professors did not teach me to have a coup d’etat, did not teach me about colour revolution,” Sokha said at the start of his trial in 2020. “They taught me about human rights and democracy.”

The above updated text supplements the below AFP story:

A Cambodian court on Friday sentenced top opposition leader Kem Sokha to 27 years in jail for treason, in a case rights groups say is politically motivated.

“Kem Sokha… is sentenced to 27 years in prison on the charge of collusion with foreigners committed in Cambodia and other places,” Judge Koy Sao said at the court in Phnom Penh.

The 69-year-old was the joint founder of the now-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party and has long been a foe of Hun Sen — Asia’s longest-serving leader.

After the verdict, Kem Sokha was immediately taken from the courtroom to his home, where he will be placed under house arrest and banned from meeting anyone apart from family members.

The court also stripped him of his right to vote and barred him from running for political office.

The trial and sentence were based on a “fabricated conspiracy” and represented a “miscarriage of justice,” United States ambassador to Cambodia W. Patrick Murphy told reporters outside the courthouse in the capital Phnom Penh on Friday.

Arrested in 2017 in a midnight swoop involving hundreds of security forces, Kem Sokha was accused of hatching a “secret plan” in collusion with foreign entities to topple the government of longtime ruler Hun Sen.

He has repeatedly denied the charges against him.

Critics say Hun Sen has wound back democratic freedoms and used the courts to stifle opponents, jailing scores of opposition activists and human rights defenders.

© Agence France-Presse

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The Indonesian owner of an internet provider service was found guilty by a court on 7 July for defamation and sentenced to a year in prison. He was indicted under Indonesia’s cyberlaw, known as UU ITE.

“My case has made it abundantly clear that our cyberlaw has some of the most elastic clauses which can be stretched to suit any charges,” Anwari said, adding that he believed there was collusion between law enforcers and his accuser.

As cyberthreats continue to grow globally, Indonesia is one of a number of countries that has attempted to increase its grip on digital governance. Abuse of the country’s cyberlaws by litigious citizens also has raised concerns over unfair sentencing. 

Responding to public criticism, President Joko Widodo said he supported revisions to the law in February 2021 and sent a letter to parliament requesting amendments to UU ITE.

“If the current cyberlaw doesn’t deliver justice, I will then encourage the House of Representatives to put forward the necessary revisions,” Widodo said.

The saga of Anwari’s penalisation started in 2021 with a business dispute against the manager of an upper-middle-class housing estate in Surabaya over the internet towers operated by Anwari’s company. The manager asked for a 35% cut from Anwari’s gross income from the estate’s residents, which he flatly refused.

“I have heard that this is a common practice with the other internet providers operating on the estate but it’s not exactly above board. I had my legal licence from the state to carry out my business, so I refused to be extorted,” said Anwari, who like many Indonesians only uses one name. 

He heard a rumour claiming the estate manager’s husband had been involved in an embezzlement case and owed a large sum of money. Wishing to defuse tension between them, Anwari planned to help pay off the debt as a reconciliatory gesture but first wanted to verify the information. 

He sent WhatsApp messages to several residents and workers at the estate, asking if the rumour was true, and subsequently was served with a warrant for defamation under the state’s cyberlaw. His private WhatsApp messages were used as incriminating evidence.

During her testimony, the plaintiff claimed Anwari’s message had ruined her reputation, despite admitting there were no adverse effects at her workplace as a result. 

The trial dragged on for almost a year, traumatising Anwari in the process.

The conviction rate for Indonesian cyberlaw cases was 96.85 between 2008 and 2020, with 88% of the defendants serving jail time, according to data from the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform.

Anindya Joediono, deputy chair of PAKU ITE, an organisation advocating for revisions to Indonesia’s cyberlaw, said the use of the statute passed in 2008 has strayed from its intended purposes.

“It was formulated to regulate electronic transactions and the use of electronic data as internet use in Indonesia increased,” Joediono said. “Instead, it is now being used to settle personal scores, to silence government critics, to prosecute complaining customers and so on.”

The current version of the cyberlaw has failed in its mission to deliver justice and is often subverted to produce the opposite result, according to Joediono. 

It has also  produced some outlandish cases. Hilda Puspita, a Yogyakarta resident who had recently divorced her husband, changed her Facebook status to “married” to her new boyfriend in 2013.

it is now being used to settle personal scores, to silence government critics, to prosecute complaining customers”

Anindya Joediono, deputy chair of PAKU ITE

Her ex-husband was offended by the post and reported the new couple for defamation. Puspita and her boyfriend were later found guilty and sentenced to three months in jail.

Baiq Nuril, a school teacher from Nusa Tenggara Barat, was sentenced to six months jail time in 2017 for recording a phone conversation in which her head teacher sexually harassed her. 

Nuril was prosecuted for “recording and distributing pornographic material” over a messaging service. She appealed her case to the Supreme Court but lost. After a public outcry, she was granted an amnesty by Widodo in 2019.

Journalist Sadli Saleh from Southeast Sulawesi was given a two-year sentence for exposing a corruption case involving the Regent of Buton in 2020.

These cases were among the most widely reported in Indonesian media and appeared to outrage many people who posted online.

Hosnan, an attorney with Workers’ Legal Aid in Surabaya, said the cyberlaw has many problems, including a tendency to favour the powerful and wealthy.

“I recently had a case in which a complaint by workers against their employer was rejected by the police, despite the fact we had witnesses,” he said.

The case started with an internal company investigation of a theft. The investigators took things too far by confiscating workers’ mobile phones. When the phones were returned, employees found a suspicious app which was determined to be surveillance software.

The workers filed a complaint against the company for cloning their data and installing surveillance software, acts which are illegal under the cyberlaw. Police dismissed the case, citing lack of evidence, Hosnan said. 

To file complaints under the cyberlaw, Indonesians must be prepared to pay high costs.The initial setup, including expert witness costs, could amount to $2,000 (IDR 30 million), while the minimum wage for the Surabaya region is around $300 (IDR 4.4 million) per month, Joediono explained.

PAKU ITE and other advocacy groups including SAFENet and Legal Aid, have spearheaded a campaign asking MPs to expedite the process. The advocacy coalition was granted a hearing in early July by a parliamentary committee in Jakarta to air its grievances.

“We made a recommendation that parliament set up a special committee to draft a new bill. This is important because the drafting process should have been finished last year,” PAKU ITE Chairman Muhammad Arsyad said.

The government and House of Representatives previously agreed to amend the law in 2016, but critics said the changes were superficial.

“The 2016 revision only reduced the maximum sentence for defamation from six years’ imprisonment to four while the clause should have been struck out altogether,” Arsyad said.

Changes to the law will not come soon enough for Anwari, who decided to appeal his conviction and steeled himself for a lengthy legal battle.

“What I’m against is a corrupt system which makes criminalisation an industry,” he said. “I could have bribed my way through if all I wanted was to avoid jail time. But what I want is justice. So, to get this, I’m willing to do it the hard way.”

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Suu Kyi has been in military custody since a coup ousted her government in February last year and plunged the Southeast Asian nation into turmoil.

In the latest case, the Nobel laureate was accused of accepting a bribe of $600,000 in cash and gold bars.

After two days of delays, the special court in the military-built capital Naypyidaw handed down its verdict and sentence early Wednesday.

“Regarding taking gold and dollars from U Phyo Min Thein, the court sentenced her to five years’ imprisonment,” junta spokesperson Zaw Min Tun told AFP.

“She will be under house arrest. I do not know whether she asked for appeal. They are working according to the legal way. As far as I know, she’s in good health.”

Local media, citing unnamed sources close to the court, later reported she plans to appeal.

Wednesday’s sentencing earned rebukes from abroad.

The European Union slammed the trial as “politically motivated” and “yet another major setback for democracy in Myanmar since the military coup.”

At the United Nations, deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Suu Kyi was not afforded a fair hearing, and that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “wants all of the political prisoners — and that includes Aung San Suu Kyi — to be released.”

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee for its part branded the sentencing a “travesty” and slammed the junta’s “brazen persecution of the democratic leaders of Myanmar.”

Suu Kyi still faces a raft of other criminal charges, including violating the official secrets act, corruption and electoral fraud, and could be jailed for more than 100 years if convicted on all counts.

The 76-year-old had already been sentenced to six years in jail for incitement against the military, breaching Covid-19 rules and breaking a telecommunications law — although she will remain under house arrest while she fights other charges.

Journalists have been barred from attending the court hearings and Suu Kyi’s lawyers have been banned from speaking to the media.

She remains confined to an undisclosed location in the capital, with her link to the outside world limited to brief pre-trial meetings with lawyers.

“The days of Aung San Suu Kyi as a free woman are effectively over,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, told AFP.

“Destroying popular democracy in Myanmar also means getting rid of Aung San Suu Kyi, and the junta is leaving nothing to chance.”

– Turmoil, investor flight –

The coup sparked widespread protests and unrest which the military sought to crush by force.

According to a local monitoring group, the crackdown has left more than 1,700 civilians dead and seen some 13,000 arrested.

Suu Kyi has been the face of Myanmar’s democratic hopes for more than 30 years, but her earlier six-year sentence already meant she is likely to miss elections the junta says it plans to hold by next year.

Independent Myanmar analyst David Mathieson said the junta was using the criminal cases to make Suu Kyi “politically irrelevant”.

“This is just another squalid step in solidifying the coup,” he told AFP.

“This is politically motivated pure and simple.”

Many of her political allies have also been arrested since the coup, with one chief minister sentenced to 75 years in jail.

A tranche of ousted lawmakers from her National League for Democracy formed a parallel “National Unity Government” (NUG) in a bid to undermine the junta’s legitimacy.

However, the NUG holds no territory and has not been recognised by any foreign government.

Numerous “People’s Defence Force” civilian militias have sprung up around the country to take the fight to the junta, and analysts say their effectiveness has surprised the army.

Last week junta supremo Min Aung Hlaing called for peace talks with Myanmar’s long-established ethnic rebel groups — which control large areas and have battled the military for decades.

The turmoil that has engulfed Myanmar following the coup has spooked foreign investors who flocked to the country after the dawn of democracy around 2011.

© Agence France-Presse

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The Nobel laureate has been detained since February 1 when her government was forced out in an early morning coup, ending Myanmar’s short-lived experiment with democracy.

The generals’ power grab triggered widespread dissent, which security forces sought to quell with mass detentions and bloody crackdowns in which more than 1,400 civilians have been killed, according to a local monitoring group.

A source with knowledge of the case told AFP the 76-year-old was found guilty of two charges related to illegally importing and owning walkie-talkies and one of breaking coronavirus rules.

The walkie-talkie charges stem from when soldiers raided her house on the day of the coup, allegedly discovering the contraband equipment.

Monday’s sentence adds to the penalties the court handed down in December when she was jailed for four years for incitement and breaching Covid-19 rules while campaigning.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing cut the sentence to two years and said she could serve her term under house arrest in the capital Naypyidaw.

– ‘Fear tactic’ –

December’s ruling drew international condemnation, and the Myanmar public reverted to old protesting tactics of banging pots and pans in a show of anger.

Ahead of the verdict, Manny Maung, a Human Rights Watch researcher, said further convictions would deepen nationwide discontent.

“The announcement of her last conviction resulted in one of the highest days of social media interactions from inside Myanmar, and deeply angered the public,” she told AFP.

“The military is calculating this (the cases) as a fear tactic but it only serves to direct more anger from the public.”

Journalists have been barred from attending hearings, and Suu Kyi’s lawyers have been muzzled from speaking to the media.

Under a previous junta regime, Suu Kyi spent long spells under house arrest in her family mansion in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. 

Today, she is confined to an undisclosed location in the capital, with her link to the outside world limited to brief pre-trial meetings with her lawyers.

Besides Monday’s cases, she is also facing multiple counts of corruption — each of which is punishable by 15 years in jail — and of violating the official secrets act.

In November, she and 15 other officials, including Myanmar’s president Win Myint, were also charged with alleged electoral fraud during the 2020 elections.

Her National League for Democracy party had swept the polls in a landslide, trouncing a military-aligned party by a wider margin than the previous 2015 election.

Since the coup, many of her political allies have been arrested, with one chief minister sentenced to 75 years in jail, while others are in hiding.

© Agence France-Presse

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“False accusations spread against me on Facebook resulting in me and my family receiving tremendous [amounts of] death threats, threats of physical violence, harassment [and] insults,” Ghani said.

In Southeast Asia, Facebook has been criticised for allowing hate speech and disinformation on its platform while compromising with dictatorial regimes.

Governments including those in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam have leveraged the platform to silence dissent and spread propaganda.

Facebook – recently renamed Meta, although the website’s title is unchanged – has come under increased global scrutiny since whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked a trove of internal reports styled by the media as ‘The Facebook Papers.’

One document revealed 87% of the company’s global budget for classifying misinformation goes to the United States, leaving just 13% for the rest of the world. The effects of the limited resource allocation for monitoring in Southeast Asia are apparent in bigotry and authoritative disinformation across the site.

A Meta spokesperson who would not identify themself over email said budget details are not available to the public. However, the company noted it was “on track” to spend more than $5 billion on safety and security in 2021 through the work of 40,000 employees worldwide “including native Khmer, Burmese, Tagalog, Indonesian and Thai speakers.”

Emerlynne Gil, Amnesty International’s Southeast Asia deputy regional director for research, said that while activists use Facebook to promote human rights, authorities and non-state actors have been more successful at utilising the platform. 

“Right now, one outweighs the other in the sense that the state and those sponsored by the state are stronger and more effective in their use of the platform to get messages across,” Gil said. “Facebook is playing a very dangerous game.”

Myanmar hate speech 

Facebook has been used to disseminate hate speech toward ethnic Rohingya people since the company’s arrival in Myanmar in 2010, long before a genocide against Rohingya in 2016 and 2017. Since the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, hate speech against the predominantly Muslim group also has surged on Facebook in Malaysia. 

Ghani escaped a military camp in Myanmar in 1988 after being detained for demonstrating at pro-democracy protests known as the 8888 Uprising. He settled in Malaysia in 1992 and established the Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organisation Malaysia (MERHROM).

False information and hate speech spread against Ghani and he received his first Facebook death threat after accusations spread online claiming he demanded citizenship and equal rights for Rohingya in Malaysia. The misinformation occurred following a sensitive period when Malaysia’s Navy pushed back 206 Rohingya in boats on 16 April 2020 and MERHROM issued a statement on 21 April urging the UN and ASEAN to pressure Myanmar to end genocidal attacks and refugee trafficking of Rohingya and restore their Myanmar citizenship. 

Despite multiple reports to Facebook from family, friends and NGOs, Ghani claimed the platform has done little to stop the hate speech and defamation his family continues to suffer 19 months later.

“This condition I live in, maybe I want to die,” said Ghani, adding that Facebook should be accountable for the online attacks. “They are making money but they are letting us die.”

Nickey Diamond, an activist and Ph.D. candidate studying anti-Muslim hate speech in Myanmar, has regularly received threats on Facebook. He was warned by an informant to leave the country after the 1 February coup that installed a military government. 

Diamond submitted reports to Facebook after he was targeted again in October, but he said the company’s artificial intelligence technology does not sufficiently detect the nuances of the Burmese language.

“[There have been] a lot of threats and campaigns… for killing me,” he said. “They have a reporting system but killing me is written in a code word that A.I. can’t understand.”

Meta has a team of more than 100 Burmese speakers reviewing content, the company stated. The spokesperson said Meta understands the reality of the “challenges” and remains “proud” of its work: “We have dedicated teams working to stop abuse on our platform in countries where there is heightened risk of conflict and violence.”

Rohingya refugees sued Meta for $150 billion in a class-action lawsuit filed on 6 December in a California court. The complaint alleges Facebook’s arrival in Myanmar “amounted to a substantial cause, and eventual perpetuation, of the Rohingya genocide.”

John Quinley of human rights group Fortify Rights said he believes anti-Rohingya content monitoring has improved, but Facebook could hire Rohingya employees to more effectively monitor the dangerous speech. 

“If you’re hiring people in the communities that are being oppressed and… experienced these violations themselves, then they can monitor the content better than anyone because they know the issues better than anyone,” Quinley said. 

Thailand’s information operations 

The Thai military has been active on social media for years, staging the world’s first ‘cyber coup’ in 2014 by announcing its plan for a government overthrow on Facebook and Twitter. 

Since then, Facebook has shown a willingness to comply with the Thai government’s restrictive laws, including blocking access to the popular pro-democracy group Royalist Marketplace at the request of Thai authorities.

Activists also suspect the Thai military of social media subterfuge. In March, Facebook removed dozens of accounts, pages and groups connected to the Thai military’s Internal Security Operations Command. Facebook claimed there was evidence of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” involving campaigns and deceptive networks posting and sharing content targeting Thailand’s southern provinces.

Following a decades-long separatist movement and insurgency claiming thousands of lives, in 2005 Thailand began issuing emergency decrees and elevating military power in the three southern provinces, which have majority Malay muslim populations.

A 2020 Stanford Internet Observatory study found the Thai military’s information operations were used to discredit human rights groups and shape public perceptions of alleged insurgents and those wounded, detained or killed by the military. 

Pornpen Khongkachonkiet has been hounded by internet trolls for years. The director of the Cross Cultural Foundation (CrCF), a human rights NGO, advocates for the ethnic-minority Malay muslims. Facebook pages show memes of Khongkachonkiet juxtaposed with bomb carnage from insurgent attacks or on a mock wanted poster.

“My photos… had been [distributed] so widely, even my family members who are not really political had received them on their personal channels,” she said. “That was something that really affected me personally.”

Khongkachonkiet said she believes the memes were part of a coordinated military campaign to undermine her work. Two fellow activists, often targeted in the same memes as Khongkachonkiet, sued the Thai Royal Army and government after the military’s information operations against the southern provinces were revealed in a government budget meeting for the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), a military agency focused on national security issues.

Khongkachonkiet said the malicious, violent memes first appeared on Facebook after she co-authored a 2016 report, “Torture and ill treatment in the Deep South,” which detailed dozens of human rights violations by the military and led to criminal defamation charges against the authors in 2016. 

While the charges were dropped, dozens of crude and hostile memes still appear on social media, including Facebook, and have served as a public warning to potential allies by placing Khongkachonkiet and CrCF on the military’s “black list,” she said.

Facebook accounts have posted inflammatory memes and content endorsing extrajudicial killings of Malay muslims and branding the deceased as terrorists and criminals. Pro-ISOC pages have hosted live broadcasts about the deaths.

“The objective is to legitimise what the government and military has done to Muslims in the Deep South – arrested, detained and killed,” Khongkachonkiet said. “And the message of those posts is trying to justify the killing.”

Cambodia’s persecution pipeline

Facebook has played a key role in high-profile arrests of activists and opposition figures in Cambodia.

Several members of Mother Nature Cambodia, an advocacy group known for video posts highlighting environmental issues, were arrested in June and charged with plotting to overthrow the government while documenting sewage drainage into the Tonle Sap river.

Less than a week later, a leaked video of a Zoom call between Mother Nature members was uploaded to YouTube and posted on a Facebook page under a Khmer-language name translated as “Defeat the traitor.” The same account holder previously posted a series of private, internal Mother Nature communications. 

The Mother Nature video call included remarks deemed by authorities to disrespect Cambodia’s king, triggering charges against two activists, Sun Ratha and Yim Leanghy, under the Kingdom’s lèse-majesté law criminalising insults against the monarch. They also faced charges of plotting against the government, along with fellow activist Ly Chandaravuth. Details of the leaked conversation and lèse-majesté accusations were quickly published by pro-government news site Fresh News Asia.

“I’m 100% sure that there are links between these anonymous pages [and] articles on Fresh News written by anonymous writers,” said Mother Nature founder Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, a Spaniard who was deported in 2015 and still faces charges in absentia of plotting and insulting Cambodia’s king. 

Gonzalez-Davidson said the leaked video call was used as evidence to bring charges against the activists: “It’s almost like a justification. ‘Oh, [the activists] are evil. They did commit a crime. This is the evidence.’”

Am Sam Ath, deputy director of Cambodian human rights group Licadho, said prosecuting Mother Nature activists for the video content is misguided and authorities should focus on identifying the source of the leaked material. 

“The person who hacked into the meeting was wrong. They should have arrested that person instead of the group of people [from Mother Nature],” Sam Ath said. “You can’t copy or film video calls without permission. People have the right to privacy in their communications.”

Gonzalez-Davidson shared a screenshot of an exchange with Facebook in which the company said the post “doesn’t go against any of our Community Standards” and would not be taken down. The activist sought help from Amnesty International, which contacted Facebook and led to the company removing the video.

Yet the anonymous page remains active on Facebook and the clip was reposted in September, although the video was removed again after the Globe contacted Meta and requested comment.

The three Mother Nature activists were released on bail in November, along with three other activists who had been in pre-trial detention since September 2020. They are awaiting trial. 

The case is not the first time anonymous Facebook pages have leaked information used against activists and opposition figures.

Audio recordings of intimate phone calls between Cambodian opposition figure Kem Sokha and a young manicurist were posted on the woman’s Facebook page after it was hacked in 2016. The fallout led to the incarceration of several human rights workers accused of bribing the woman and forced Sokha into hiding for months. 

The New York Times detailed how Cambodian government employees fabricated evidence to smear activist monk Luon Sovath. Using fake Facebook accounts, the employees posted a doctored video claiming he had slept with several women, violating his Buddhist celibacy vows. The human rights advocate fled the country to avoid arrest on rape charges. 

Those cases and numerous arrests of people for allegedly inciting unrest through Facebook posts have convinced Gonzalez-Davidson of the company’s capitulation to the Cambodian government under prime minister Hun Sen. 

“Facebook is definitely allowing its platform to become one of the most important tools of the Hun Sen dictatorship to monitor, to threaten people who express their views democratically,” Gonzalez-Davidson said. “It’s by far the most important tool of propaganda.”

Facebook should have more Cambodian staff who understand the Khmer language and its cultural nuances and context, enabling the company to proactively respond to violations of its community guidelines, he said. 

A team of native Khmer speakers monitors Facebook content, according to Meta, although the company did not specify the number of Cambodian employees working on the site, the primary form of social media in a country of more than 16 million people. 

Vietnam’s cyber army

At least 10,000 Vietnamese soldiers, collectively known as Force 47, build pro-state Facebook groups and attempt to silence online criticism of the communist country’s single-party government. Democracy advocates and researchers have said propaganda spread on Facebook by Force 47 qualifies as misinformation.

The “cyber-army tactics” include mass reportage of posts, troll army pile-ons in comment sections and account hacking, according to Will Nguyen, a Vietnamese democracy advocate.

Falsely notifying Facebook that a user has died is another method the government uses in attempts to remove the accounts of those deemed “anti-state,” according to a November report from non-profit organisation The 88 Project. 

Facebook removed a network of accounts the company said was targeting Vietnamese activists critical of the government, Reuters reported on 1 December. David Agranovich, Facebook’s head of global threat disruption, said the network used fake accounts to pose as their targets and then claim the real activist accounts were fakes. Some brazenly offered to remove accounts as a commercial service. 

“The Vietnamese government treats the internet as simply another ‘battlefield’ on which to conduct their war against ‘hostile forces,’ including its own citizens who are critical of the regime,” Nguyen said in a written response. “When it comes to political matters in Vietnam, negative consequences of online activities readily stretch to the physical world.”

Vietnamese authorities arrested five journalists from Facebook-based news site Báo Sạch, or Clean Newspaper, in late October for “abusing democracy and freedom to infringe on state interests.”

Mai Pham, a grassroots activist who asked to use a pseudonym to protect her safety, experienced firsthand how Facebook can impact Vietnamese citizens. A 2016 chemical spill tied to a unit of Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics on the central coast of Vietnam resulted in mass fish deaths, triggering rare protests. 

Pham attended a demonstration in her hometown of Ho Chi Minh City seeking answers about the chemical spill and justice for its victims. She posted a video of the protest on Facebook, which accumulated millions of views and thousands of shares within hours. By the end of the day, she lost her account.

“[The government] will ask Facebook to shut you down, or they have a lot of online police and public commentators who will attack your account,” she said. “They will report you. Thousands of reports.”

After posting the video, Pham was followed regularly by police who monitored her movements with the assistance of security staff in her apartment building, she said.

Government internet monitoring has increased since 2018 under a Vietnamese cybersecurity law requiring global technology companies to establish physical offices. Under the statute, Facebook must locally store the data of more than 65 million users in the country.

Facing the possibility of being kicked offline in Vietnam, where the company earns annual revenue of about $1 billion, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg caved to government demands and agreed to site monitoring and increased censorship of anti-state posts.

“We do restrict some content in Vietnam to help ensure our services remain available,” the Meta spokesperson said. “Our goal is to keep our services running in Vietnam so we can provide a space for as many people as possible to express themselves, connect with friends and run their business.”

Pham said Facebook’s Vietnam capitulation signals the company’s prioritisation of profit over human rights: “Facebook [is a] perpetrator, they support the government to censor whatever the dissidents say. They delete the information that people raise even though it supports human rights.”

“The CEO just wants more and more money,” she said.

Allowing government monitoring threatens citizens who use the platform to criticise the Communist Party and its leaders, said Ha Hoang Hop, a senior fellow in Vietnamese Studies at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. 

“Facebook must be responsible for those censures that go against international law and against the UN Convention on Human Rights,” Hop said. “I hope that Facebook will uphold the rights to the freedom of expression of the Facebookers, and the Facebookers will defend their rights.”

Democracy advocate Nguyen noted that Facebook’s standing as Vietnam’s largest medium for free expression carries an inherent duty.

“I think the company has a responsibility to not become another tool of oppression,” Nguyen said.

This article was updated on 13 December 2021 to correct an inaccurate description of information shared by MERHROM.

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Danny Fenster, managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, was detained at Yangon International Airport as he attempted to leave the country.

He is currently on trial for allegedly encouraging dissent against the military, which carries a maximum three-year jail sentence.

During the latest hearing at Insein prison in Yangon on Monday, he was hit with another charge of unlawful association, his lawyer Than Zaw Aung said.

Conviction under the colonial-era law also carries a maximum sentence of three years in jail.

It has previously been used to target journalists contacting Myanmar’s myriad ethnic armed groups fighting the state for increased autonomy and control over natural resources.

Fenster’s second trial is expected to start on October 15, Than Zaw Aung said.

His client was “in good health, but he lost weight a little bit”, he added.

Fenster, 37, had been working for Frontier for around a year and was heading home to see his family when he was detained on May 24.

He is believed to have contracted Covid-19 during his detention, family members said during a conference call with American journalists in August.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in a February 1 coup and ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government.

The press has been squeezed as the junta tries to tighten control over the flow of information, throttling internet access and revoking the licences of local media outlets.

More than 100 journalists have been arrested since the putsch, according to Reporting ASEAN, a monitoring group.  

It says 48 are still in detention.

© Agence France-Presse

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The law would allow authorities to compel internet service providers and social media platforms to provide user information, block content and remove applications used to spread content they deem hostile.

Campaigners say it is the latest piece of draconian legislation to be rolled out in a city-state where authorities are frequently accused of curbing civil liberties.

But in a lengthy address to parliament, Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said that Singapore was vulnerable to “hostile information campaigns” carried out from overseas and through local proxies.

“The internet has created a powerful new medium for subversion,” he said.

“Countries are actively developing attack and defence capabilities as an arm of warfare, equal to and more potent than the land, air and naval forces.”

His People’s Action Party, which has governed Singapore for over six decades, has a large parliamentary majority and the bill is expected to pass easily.

The main opposition Workers’ Party has called for changes to be made to the draft bill, raising concerns about its broad provisions, while another opposition group called for further consultations.

And media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has warned the bill carries “the seeds of the worst totalitarian leanings”.

“This bill institutionalises the persecution of any domestic entity that does not toe the line set by the government and ruling party, starting with independent media outlets,” he said.

He also warned there was a “lack of independent legal recourse for those who are given orders by the government” — although Shanmugam insisted the bill provided for adequate judicial review. 

Independent media have faced increasing pressure in the city-state, with leading news website The Online Citizen suspended last month for failing to declare its funding sources. Mainstream media is mostly pro-government.

The bill comes two years after the introduction of a law aimed at combatting online misinformation that was criticised by rights groups and tech giants for curbing free speech.

© Agence France-Presse

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Critics frequently accuse the tightly regulated city-state of curbing media freedoms, and The Online Citizen (TOC) had long been in the government’s crosshairs.

One of Singapore’s few alternative news sources, it often ran stories more critical of the authorities than those in the pro-government mainstream media. 

The city-state’s media regulator said it had suspended the company’s licence to operate its websites and social media channels as it had not fully met obligations to declare funding. 

Sites such as TOC “are required to be transparent about their sources of funding”, the Infocomm Media Development Authority said in a statement.

“This is to prevent such sites from being controlled by foreign actors, or coming under the influence of foreign entities or funding.”

TOC was ordered to disable its websites and social media accounts by Thursday. If it fails to provide enough further information, then its licence to operate may be cancelled entirely, the regulator warned. 

The site, which first registered in 2018, had not fully complied with its obligations to declare its funding since 2019, the regulator said. 

It noted that TOC had allowed subscribers to get specific articles written in return for “subscription funding”, and warned this “could be an avenue for foreign influence”.

But chief editor Terry Xu told AFP that the site “has never received any foreign funding, nor would it in the future”, and the company was considering its options.

Earlier this month, Xu and one TOC writer were ordered to pay substantial damages after losing a defamation suit against Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. 

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said the licence suspension was “outrageous and unacceptable censorship, disguised as government regulatory action”.

“The reality is the Singaporean government has been looking to shut down TOC by hook or by crook, because they simply don’t like their independence or their critical reporting.”

Singapore ranks 160th out of 180 countries and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, where number one indicates the country with the greatest media freedoms. 

© Agence France-Presse

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