NUG Acting President Calls On Norway’s Prime Minister To Prevent Sale Of Telenor To Junta-Linked Company
The National Unity Government’s (NUG) acting president, Duwa Lashi La, has called on the prime minister of Norway to intervene to prevent the sale of the Myanmar arm of telecoms firm Telenor to a junta-linked company.
In an open letter to Jonas Gahr Støre on Thursday, the acting president said Norway’s government should use its position as Telenor’s majority shareholder to place a request for the decision to sell to be reversed or deferred.
“In our cabinet meeting, the National Unity Government of Myanmar decided that the sale… is not acceptable and should not be approved,” he wrote.
Norway’s government should instruct Telenor to “ignore any decisions made by the illegitimate military regime,” he added.
Telenor Myanmar is due to be sold to Lebanon’s M1 Group this month. M1, which has been criticised for working with despotic regimes worldwide, will then transfer a majority stake in the venture to a Myanmar firm with strong ties to the military named Shwe Byain Phyu, industry sources have told Myanmar Now.
The sale will see Telenor hand over the sensitive personal data of its more than 18 million subscribers, including the times, dates and locations of calls and text messages, information the junta can use to target its opponents.
Both Telenor and M1 have refused to confirm that Shwe Byain Phyu will be the eventual majority owner of the new venture. An M1 spokesperson told Myanmar Now on Friday that the deal with Telenor was “confidential”.
“No third party is involved in this agreement,” the spokesperson said, though they did not deny industry insiders’ reports that a third party is due to be brought in after the agreement is finalised.
“We look forward to sharing more information about the identity of the new entity, the ownership structure and the brand name that will eventually take over Telenor’s Myanmar operations in due course, once the regulatory process is finalised,” the spokesperson said.
A leader of the 1988 democratic uprising, Min Ko Naing joined a rally protesting the military coup in downtown Yangon on February 7, 2021. (Myanmar Now)
Telenor will transfer call data records for 18m subscribers to junta-linked company
Activists fear Telenor’s transfer of personal data, which may get caught in European data protection law, will place them at risk of arrest by the junta
Industry sources have told Myanmar Now that Telenor is “rushing” to get regulatory approval for the sale this week.
Leaked documents show the final owner of Telenor Myanmar will be Investcom Myanmar, a joint venture between M1 and Shwe Byain Phyu, which previously worked with a military-owned firm to import petrol to Myanmar.
In a letter sent earlier this month to Telenor, seen by Myanmar Now, the junta’s telecoms regulator discussed the ownership structure of Investcom Myanmar, saying it would be majority-owned by Shwe Byain Phyu.
An M1 subsidiary and Shwe Byain Phyu jointly own a Singapore-based company named Investcom Pte, files published by the country’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority show.
M1’s spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s relationship to Shwe Byain Phyu.
“We cannot comment on rumours, speculations or ongoing negotiations. Should the regulatory decision come out in our favour, we will announce the structure,” they said.
Myanmar Now’s industry source said this week that Shwe Byain Phyu will own between 70 and 80 percent of the new venture, with the remaining shares held by M1.
“We can’t confirm or deny this information, which is speculative and premature at this stage, especially before the regulatory approval,” the spokesperson said.
A Telenor logo at a shop in the central station in downtown Gothenburg, Sweden in 2013 (EPA)
Myanmar citizen files data privacy complaint against Telenor with Norwegian government agency
The complaint calls on Norway’s data protection authority to stop the transfer of user data to the operation’s military-linked buyer, recommending Telenor delete its Myanmar customer database
Telenor wrote off its Myanmar business at a cost of US$782 million in May last year and announced the sale to M1 for US$105 million in July.
On Monday, a Myanmar citizen filed a data privacy complaint against Telenor with the Norwegian Data Protection Authority, accusing the firm of breaching the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and seeking to halt the transfer of sensitive data in the sale.
The Netherlands-based Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), which is supporting the complaint, said that Norway has a responsibility to prevent a junta-linked company from gaining control of the personal data of Myanmar users.
Pro-democracy activists, human rights defenders, and journalists were among those at risk from the data being transferred.
In July, SOMO filed a complaint against Telenor with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on behalf of hundreds of Myanmar civil society organisations, accusing the company of “irresponsible disengagement” from the country and alleging that the sale violated OECD standards outlining the requirements for a responsible exit.
M1 said it would abide by Myanmar’s law, though one observer noted that this was less than reassuring given that the military junta has control of the country’s legal infrastructure.
“M1 will not facilitate unlawful interception requests by anyone in any country,” the company spokesperson said.
The company would abide by the military-drafted 2008 constitution and the 2017 Law Protecting the Privacy and Security of Citizens, the spokesperson added.
The NUG last year declared that the 2008 constitution had been abolished, while the junta last year amended the 2017 law to give its forces the power to carry out surveillance, searches, arrests and seizures without a warrant.
An advisor for Free Expression Myanmar, Oliver Spencer said it was not encouraging for M1 to promise to abide by Myanmar’s “deeply repressive laws”.
“Those laws are key to the military’s crackdown on the public. Myanmar’s laws facilitate the invasion of privacy, not protect it,” he told Myanmar Now.
M1 is not a signatory to the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment or its Global Compact, both of which have been around for 20 years, he noted.
The Telenor sale should be “independent, transparent, and accountable” because the operations of telecoms companies are critical to communications, privacy, access to information, and free speech, he said.
“Unfortunately, this sale has been anything but transparent when millions of users don’t even know who exactly is buying,” he added.
Companies owned by the adult children of two of Myanmar’s top generals have been granted numerous government tenders since last year’s military coup, according to documents seen by Myanmar Now.
In a sign that the regime that is now waging war on the country’s civilian population intends to continue the military’s long-standing practice of profiting from its rule, the documents show that companies linked to Lt-Gen Aung Lin Dwe and Lt-Gen Moe Myint Tun—both members of the junta that seized power in February 2021—have been awarded a number of lucrative contracts over the past year
According to documents and information received from an inside source, businesses run by members of Aung Lin Dwe’s family have been granted tenders to run several construction projects, including in the junta’s administrative capital Naypyitaw, while companies with ties to Moe Myint Tun have been awarded at least nine projects—among them, one for repairing cables inside the Naypyitaw Union Territory.
“Those two are the biggest ones. Their companies won many tenders at the price of their own choosing,” said the source, who did not want to be named.
According to the records of the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration, Moe Myint Tun’s three adult children—Moe Htet Htet Tun, Khaing Moe Myint, and Yadanar Moe Myint—serve as directors of three companies that were registered at the same Naypyitaw address in the months leading up to the overthrow of Myanmar’s elected civilian government.
Between them, these three companies—Yadanar Moe Htet Aung, Phyo Pyae Pyae, and Pin Gangaw—won multiple tenders from two ministries between October of last year and March of this year, documents received by Myanmar Now showed.
The Ministry of Border Affairs awarded one contract during this period for a project in the Pa-O region, with three more granted for the current fiscal year. The Department of Prisons, which is under the Ministry of Home Affairs, awarded another three to the companies in the second half of last year.
According to Myanmar Now’s source, two army captains have been assigned the task of submitting tenders for the companies belonging to Moe Myat Tun’s children.
“It’s easy money for them. They aren’t doing projects that are difficult to carry out, like paving roads. They don’t have a big team working for them. It’s just the two army captains handling all the tender procedures,” said the source.
While monetary figures were not available for any of these projects, another one that was awarded for a cable-repair project in Naypyitaw’s Lewe Township was reportedly worth 500m kyat ($238,000).
At 54, Moe Myint Tun is one of the youngest high-ranking generals in Myanmar’s armed forces. A former army chief of staff and head of the military’s Naypyitaw Regional Command, he is known to be close to junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.
He currently serves as chair of the regime’s Investment Commission and sits on the board of directors at Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL), a military conglomerate.
Eliminating rivals
The secretary of the State Administration Council, Aung Lin Dwe as Myanmar’s junta calls itself, is a former judge advocate general who has been accused of ordering soldiers to destroy digital evidence of atrocities committed during the military’s “clearance operations” against the Rohingya in Rakhine State. He has also served as an MEHL director.
His three children—Shwe Yi Phoo Aung, Hlaing Bwar Aung, and Phyo Arkar Aung—have also profited from their father’s position. Between them, they own the Aung Myint Moh Lin and Mingalar Aung Myay construction companies and the Shwe Yee Phyo Pyae production company. All three have been blacklisted by the civilian National Unity Government (NUG), which has urged the public to boycott the companies.
According to Myanmar Now’s source, Aung Myint Moh Lin and Mingalar Aung Myay “take most of the road construction projects” in Naypyitaw. Mingalar Aung Myay has also been awarded many other big-budget projects by the military and the home affairs and border affairs ministries.
In addition to their construction companies, the family also owns a cement factory located on a four-acre plot of land near Naypyitaw, the source said.
As junta-appointed officials continue to scrutinise more than 200 companies that were awarded major contracts in Naypyitaw before the coup, Aung Lin Dwe’s children stand to win an even bigger share of the pie.
New bidding rules and background checks designed to weed out companies sympathetic to anti-regime forces are also expected to eliminate many other potential rivals, sources said.
Even in areas that have seen relatively little resistance to the coup, such as Shan State, opportunities to compete for government contracts are drying up.
“It’s strange that local businesses can no longer win government tenders. Only companies that are either junta-owned or junta-affiliated can win them,” said the owner of a trading company based in Muse, a town on Myanmar’s border with China.
While the military’s oversized role in the economy has long been a fact of life in Myanmar, many in the country’s business community say that it is harder now than ever to get ahead without ties to top generals.
The biggest winners these days, apart from those related to members of the military council, are ministry officials loyal to the regime, according to some observers.
“Those people are the ‘brothers’ of the army generals. If you work for one of the ministries, you are practically a member of the military. They are all a part of the same ecosystem,” said a source close to the junta.
The NUG says that one of the chief reasons the military decided to seize power again last year was that it wanted to regain total control over the economy after a decade of relative openness.
Under successive regimes that ruled Myanmar for nearly half a century, the military’s top brass grew enormously wealthy, even as the country descended into ever-deepening poverty. And now history is repeating itself, according to the spokesperson of the NUG’s president’s office, Kyaw Zaw.
“The army generals and their families are growing richer as ordinary citizens starve. They’re basically robbing the country’s people,” he said.
Region’s Launglon Township, according to the local anti-junta People’s Defence Force (PDF) chapter.
An information officer from the Launglon PDF explained that 40-year-old Mee Wai’s house in Pyin Gyi village, more than 20 miles north of Launglon town, was immediately targeted in the 6am attack, but for unknown reasons.
“They arrived in cars, started firing weapons, and took money and valuables from the house,” he said, adding that gold, money, a motorcycle and a phone were among the items taken.
Both Myanmar army soldiers and members of the military-backed Pyu Saw Htee militia were involved, he told Myanmar Now.
The troops have been blaming assaults and robberies in the region on resistance groups, the PDF spokesperson said, denying the accusation.
“Those villages are located near the Pyu Saw Htee villages and they have so many supporters there, so it would be hard for us to launch an attack there,” he explained.
Mee Wai survived the shooting but was in serious condition and undergoing treatment for her injuries at Launglon’s hospital at the time of reporting.
Both a local and the Launglon PDF spokesperson identified her late husband as Zaw Myo Oo, an administrator for Tha Bawt Seik village, in the same tract as Pyin Gyi.
They claimed that Zaw Myo Oo was an early member of a junta-backed militia and had been murdered by unidentified perpetrators last September even before the area PDF had formed.
“Before he died, he would terrorise the village with his gun and that was why he was assassinated,” the information officer said.
Myanmar Now is unable to verify the claims about the slain administrator, nor speculate as to why his widow was targeted in Thursday’s attack.
According to a statement by the Launglon PDF, 50 troops from the Myanmar army and the Pyu Saw Htee 50 troops had previously raided the village of Nyaw Pyin, 30 miles south of Launglon town, on Wednesday morning.
The joint forces reportedly looted the home of a man who worked in a local fishery, stealing gold, cash totalling 1.7m kyat (more than US$800), and threatening to “burn the entire village to ashes” if news of the incident spread.
The military council has not released any information on its troops activities in Launglon Township.
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A court controlled by Myanmar’s military council sentenced UK ex-ambassador Vicky Bowman and her Burmese husband Htein Lin to one year in prison on Friday for violating the country’s immigration laws, according to a source familiar with the case.
The ruling comes more than one week after the couple was arrested at their home in Yangon’s Sanchaung Township on August 24 and later taken to the city’s notorious Insein Prison.
Bowman was charged under Article 13(1) of the Immigration Act for violating the terms of her visa. Her husband, renowned artist and former dissident Htein Lin, was found guilty under Article 13(5) of the same law for abetting Bowman’s violation.
The couple appeared at a court inside Insein Prison on Thursday for a hearing.
The charges against Bowman, who served as the UK’s ambassador to Myanmar from 2002 to 2006, stemmed from her failure to correctly register her place of residence in the country.
In a statement released last Thursday, the junta said that although she was officially listed as living in the couple’s Yangon home, she had actually been residing in a house owned by Htein Lin in Kalaw, Shan State, from May 2021 until early last month.
Their arrests came amid growing diplomatic tensions between the UK government and the military regime that seized power in the February 2021 coup.
Hours before their arrests on Wednesday, the UK added three companies to their Myanmar sanctions list: International Gateways Group of Companies, Sky One Construction Company and Sapphire Group of Companies.
The Myanmar military regime expelled the head of the UK embassy, Pete Vowles, from the country in July. Vowles was appointed ambassador one year earlier but he had not presented his required credentials to the military council despite requests to do so by the junta.
Nikkei Asia reported that the UK downgraded his title to chargé d’affaires in response to the deteriorating situation in Myanmar. The junta refused to accept the appointment and called on the UK government to send a replacement.
Vowles has been outspoken regarding the coup regime’s atrocities and Myanmar people’s resistance movement to military rule. He was stranded in Thailand for several months earlier this year as the military refused to issue him a visa to re-enter Myanmar. He was later permitted to return to the country but tweeted on July 13 that he had been made to exit.
Bowman has been the director of the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business since 2013, an initiative promoting responsible practices among commercial enterprises in the country.
Htein Lin is a well-known painter, performance artist, and former political prisoner who was a member of the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, an armed resistance force formed in the wake of the 8-8-88 popular uprising. He was incarcerated from 1998 until 2004 by the military regime in power at that time. His art frequently depicts the gruesome torture he faced in prison and as a victim of internal fighting within the rebel group to which he once belonged.
He later married Bowman and moved to London until they returned to Yangon in 2013.
They were reportedly recovering from recent COVID-19 infections at the time of their arrest.
