Myanmar’s military regime has imposed a new censorship system that ratcheted up restrictions on virtual private networks (VPNs). This has led to Myanmar sharing its designation as the world’s worst environment for internet freedom with China. Since seizing power in a 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military has conducted a brutally violent crackdown on dissent.
It has imprisoned thousands of people in retaliation for their online speech while building a mass censorship and surveillance regime to suppress the activities of civilian prodemocracy activists and armed resistance groups. In May 2024, the military introduced new censorship technology to block most VPNs, cutting residents off from tools they had relied on to safely and securely bypass internet controls. At the same time, Beijing has persisted in its effort to isolate China’s domestic internet from the rest of the world, blocking international traffic to some government websites and imposing huge fines on people using VPNs.
The Chinese government also continued to systematically repress dissent. For instance, online discussion about activist and journalist Sun Lin, who died in November 2023 after police beat him in apparent retaliation for his social media posts about protests against Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping, was heavily censored.
Myanmar censors VPNs, mirrors China
Well beyond the world’s worst environments, many people faced harsh repercussions for expressing themselves online. In at least 56 of the 72 countries, internet users were arrested due to their political, social, or religious expression. A prodemocracy activist in Thailand was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024, having been convicted under the country’s repressive lèse-majesté law for 18 posts about the monarchy on the social media platform X.
Iranian authorities sentenced a woman to 15 years in prison for sedition and “enemy propaganda” after she shared images of protests on social media, including a video recording of police attacking demonstrators. In Pakistan, a court sentenced a 22-year-old student to death on blasphemy charges for preparing pictures and videos that denigrated the prophet Muhammad, sentencing a 17-year-old to life in prison for sharing them on WhatsApp. This is the 14th edition of this annual study of human rights online.
The project assesses internet freedom in 72 countries, accounting for 87 percent of the world’s internet users. In 2024, Chile and the Netherlands were assessed for the first time. Both serve as global models for internet freedom, with Chile ranking third—tied with Canada—and the Netherlands ranking sixth.
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