Myanmar customers of the Norwegian telecoms group Telenor have sued the company for sharing their sensitive personal data with the junta, in a civil class action lawsuit filed in Norway on Wednesday.
The plaintiffs are seeking damages, arguing the military used the information to identify, arrest and prosecute pro-democracy activists suspected of opposing the 2021 coup in Myanmar, which constituted “serious human rights violations,” they said in a statement.
The information included names, physical addresses, Facebook and bank accounts, location data and call logs, they said.
They allege that the data sharing led to, among other things, the 2022 execution of a prominent government opponent and lawmaker, Phyo Zayar Thaw, and the arrest and jailing of civil society activist Aung Thu, the statement said.
Telenor, in which the Norwegian state owns a 54 percent stake, denied responsibility.
“In Myanmar, refusing requests from the military authorities could, in the worst case, have led to imprisonment, torture or the death penalty,” it said in a statement to AFP.
“Telenor Myanmar had no real options. We could not play Russian roulette with the lives of our employees.”
Acknowledging that it was “terrible” if Telenor data had been “misused by the authorities,” it said it was “solely the military authorities in Myanmar who are responsible for how they treat their own population.”
The plaintiffs said Justice and Accountability Initiative, a Swedish non-profit, and a Norwegian law firm had filed the lawsuit with the Asker og Baerum district court on their behalf.
If successful, the case would be “”the first ever to hold a telecoms company to account for not sufficiently protecting user data from access by an authoritarian regime,” according to Beini Ye, a lawyer for the Open Society Justice Initiative, which is supporting the suit.
Telenor Myanmar began operations in 2014 and had more than 18 million customers by 2021.
After a February 2021 coup, the junta launched a crackdown on the civilian resistance movement.
In July 2021, Telenor announced plans to sell its Myanmar subsidiary “despite warnings by civil society organisations,” the plaintiffs said.
The company later cited junta demands that it install monitoring equipment on the network as a reason for leaving the country.
According to the plaintiffs, the transaction meant all customer data and surveillance technology that Telenor had installed were turned over to a military-linked company.
They said they were aware of “at least 1,253 phone numbers belonging to users whose data was shared.”
Telenor exited Myanmar in March 2022.
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