Myanmar has recorded the lowest internet freedom rating of any country for a third straight year, with Freedom House giving the nation just 9 out of 100 points in its latest assessment. The U.S.-based rights organization said the military regime's grip on telecommunications infrastructure, combined with mass censorship and surveillance, has made the country the most hostile environment in the world for people trying to go online.
A Steep and Steady Decline
The trajectory of Myanmar's rating tells its own story. Before the 2021 coup, the country scored 36 - already categorized as "Not Free" but functioning with some degree of openness. Within months of the military takeover, that figure fell to 17. By 2024, it had dropped again to 9, where it has remained ever since. Freedom House attributes the collapse to the junta's consolidation of control over every major internet service provider, which allows authorities to impose shutdowns, filter content and monitor users at will, rather than relying on piecemeal restrictions.
This kind of centralized control marks a departure from the more fragmented censorship typical of earlier periods. When a government owns or directs the infrastructure itself, blocking a platform or cutting service to an entire region becomes a matter of policy rather than negotiation with private companies.
Shutdowns as a Weapon in an Active Conflict
Myanmar's internet restrictions cannot be separated from the wider conflict between regime forces and resistance groups. According to Athan, a local organization tracking freedom of expression, 140 of 358 monitored townships are currently experiencing communication shutdowns, with most of these areas also sites of active fighting. Cutting connectivity in contested zones serves a dual purpose for the military: it prevents residents from documenting abuses or coordinating resistance, and it obscures outside scrutiny of battlefield conduct.
For ordinary residents, the consequences are immediate and practical rather than abstract. Mobile and internet access often determine whether people receive warning of airstrikes, can reach medical services, or complete basic financial transactions. Losing connectivity in these circumstances is not an inconvenience - it is, as one digital rights analyst put it, a matter of life and death.
Criminalizing the Tools of Circumvention
Virtual private networks have become essential for Myanmar users seeking access to blocked platforms such as Facebook, which remains one of the country's most widely used communication tools despite being officially restricted. A VPN works by routing a user's traffic through an encrypted tunnel to a server elsewhere, masking both the destination and the content of the connection from local network operators. This makes it one of the few practical countermeasures against state-level blocking.
The regime's response has been to criminalize VPN use itself, turning a basic privacy and access tool into a prosecutable offense. Authorities have paired this with expanded use of the Penal Code's Section 505A, a counter-terrorism statute, and telecommunications law provisions to prosecute online expression. Monitoring group Data for Myanmar reports that enforcement in 2026 has broadened beyond individuals deemed security threats to include people simply posting political opinions, a shift that significantly widens the population at risk of arrest.
The Human Cost of Digital Repression
More than 2,000 people have been detained since the coup for online posts or comments critical of the regime, the majority stemming from activity on Facebook. The pattern intensified around the December-January elections, when authorities stepped up blocking of news platforms and anti-censorship tools alongside arrests for online expression under newer restrictive laws.
The practical effect is widespread self-censorship. Users who maintain accounts under their real names describe deliberately withholding opinions to avoid prosecution, even as they recognize this as a violation of their right to free expression. Digital rights advocates argue that digital literacy and access to circumvention tools are no longer optional skills but basic necessities for safety in Myanmar's current environment - a sobering illustration of how thoroughly internet access and physical security have become intertwined under military rule.