Irrawaddy-June 16
Myanmar’s junta is using the Mytel telecommunications operator – part-owned by the Myanmar military – to track and eavesdrop on its own soldiers by monitoring their communications and locations in an effort to halt the growing number of defections from regime forces. In their latest investigation released on Tuesday, Justice for Myanmar (JFM), a group of covert activists campaigning for justice and accountability, said that before Mytel’s public launch in June 2018 coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing allowed Mytel access to data that lists the name, rank and military identity numbers of soldiers. The decision was made with the support of base commanders as part of a promotion to increase the number of Mytel subscribers. The sales campaign was named Aung Ta Khon, or banner of victory, and gave out free SIM cards with the prefix 0969 personalized with soldiers’ military identity numbers, so allowing senior officers to easily identify their troops by their phone numbers. Mytel is operated by Telecom International Myanmar and the shareholders are Viettel Global Investment, a holding company owned by Vietnam’s Ministry of National Defense, and the Myanmar military-owned conglomerate, Myanmar Economic Corporation. Mytel telecom towers nationwide have also been blown up by resistance groups. Read more at: https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/myanmar-regime-using-mytel-sim-cards-to-track-its-own-soldiers.html
