This statement by civil society organisations in Myanmar was originally published in Free Expression Myanmar, a Coconet community member, on February 11, 2021. It has been republished here with permission.

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We, the undersigned civil society organizations, reject the so-called “Cyber Security Bill” drafted by the current military regime, which has not been entrusted by the people with legislative power. 

On 9 February 2021, the Ministry of Transport and Communications issued a directive enclosing the so-called “Cyber Security Bill” – which violates the principles of digital rights, privacy and other human rights – and circulated these documents to mobile operators and telecommunications license holders for comments.

Firstly, as this “bill” is not issued by an institution that has been entrusted with legislative power by the public to act accordingly, we do not accept this as a legitimate bill.

Secondly, the “bill” includes clauses that violate human rights including the rights to freedom of expression, data protection and privacy, and other democratic principles and human rights in the online space. As the “bill” is drafted by the current military regime to oppress those who are against its rule, and to restrict the mobilization and momentum of online resistance, we strongly condemn this action by the current military regime in accordance with our democratic principles.

The issuance of the “bill” is evidence that the military has not only attempted a coup d’état, but is also exercising undue legislative power unlawfully to oppress the public.

If this unlawful action by the current military regime is not denounced strongly in time, military oppression over the country will be long-lived and we, the undersigned civil society organizations, strongly condemn this action by the current military regime and issue the following statements –

1. We do not accept and strongly condemn the military coup d’état and demand the current military regime to return the power to the public immediately without any exceptions.

2. We do not accept, acknowledge or comply with this “bill” and directive as well as any other future “bills” that may be drafted by the current military regime in an attempt to oppress the people.

3. We strongly demand the current military regime to halt any undemocratic practices.

Signed by:

1. Action Committee for Democratic Development (ACDD)
2. Action Group for Farmers Affair (AGFA – Mandalay)
3. Action Group for Farmers Affair (AGFA – Ayeyarwady)
4. Action Group for Farmers Affair (AGFA – Bago)
5. Action Group for Farmers Affair (AGFA – Magway)
6. Action Group for Farmers Affair (AGFA – Sagaing)
7. All Arakan Students’ and Youths’ Congress-AASYC
8. Arr Marn Thit Social Development Organization
9. Arakan CSO Network
10. Ananda Data
11. Ahlin Tagar Rural Development Organization
12. Athan – Freedom of Expression Activist Organisation
13. Ayyar Pyo May Women Development Organization
14. AYY Famar Union
15. Ayeyawady West Development Organization- AWDO (Magway Region)
16. Bandugavlar Civil Call(BCC)
17. Bee House
18. Chin Agency
19. Child Prevention Network
20. Citizen Action for Transparency (ပွင့်လင်းမြင်သာလူထုလှုပ်ရှားမှုအဖွဲ့)
21. Civic Engagement Development Network
22. Civic Engagement Network for M2
23. Community Association Development
24. Community Partners Myanmar (Nae Thit Foundation)
25. COMREG Community Response Group
26. Digital Rights Collective
27. Diversity and Public Truth
28. Doe Myae Civil Social Development Organization
29. Doe Myay Community Development Organization (Twantay)
30. Empower Youth Enlightenment (EYE)
31. Empowerment Society
32. Equality Myanmar
33. Famar Agricultural Network
34. Farmers Network (ဝမ်းတွင်း)
35. Farmers and Land Rights Action Group
36. Farmers Development and Environmental Watch Group
37. Free Expression Myanmar (FEM)
38. Free Education Service Organization
39. Freedom and labor Action Group
40. FREELAND Organization Lashio
41. Future Star (မတ္တရာ)
42. Future Star Youth Organization
43. Future Light Social Development Organization
44. Gender Equality Network
45. Genuine People’s Servants – GPS
46. GOAL Organization
47. Golden Future Social Development Organization
48. Golden Heart Organization
49. Green Justice Institute (GJI)
50. Helping Hands (Local Development Organization
51. Hkumzup Development Committee
52. Hope For Children  Development Organization
53. Htum Thit Sa Rural  Development Organization
54. Htoi Gender and Development Foundation
55. Human Rights Defenders & Promoters (HRDP)
56. Human Rights Educators Network
57. Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HRFOM)
58. International Bridges to Justice (Myanmar)
59. Justice For All (လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ကာကွယ်စောင့်ရှောက်ခြင်းနှင့် တရားမျှတမှု့ )
60. Justice Movement for Community Inlay
61. Kaung Myat Hnalonethar Health Care Organization
62. Kan Chay Arr Man Fishery Development Organization
63. Kaung Rwai
64. Karenni State Farmer Union
65. Kayah Earthrights Action Network (KEAN)
66. Kachin State Women Network
67. Kachin Women Union
68. Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand (KWAT)
69. Kanaung Institute
70. Kanpetlet Land Development Organization
71. Karen Peace Support Network
72. Keng Tung Youth
73. KESAN Karen Environment and Social Action Network
74. Kings N Queens
75. Kyaukse Youth Network
76. Lamyan Farmers Network
77. LatButta Famar Union
78. Legal Knowledge Sharing Group
79. Let’s Help Each Other
80. LGBT rights Network
81. LAIN Technical Support Group
82. Light Social Development Organization
83. Lin lake Kyal Social Development Organization
84. Mandalay Affairs Team
85. Mandalay Community Center
86. Mandalay Regional Youth Association (MRYA)
87. Mandalay Regional Youth Network
88.  Mandalay Women Political Federation (MWPF – မန္တလေး)
89. Mann Thingaha (Gender GBV Team)
90. Maramagri Youth Network
91. MATA(Sagaing)
92. Matupi Women Association
93. Meiktila Youth Network
94. Minhla Youth Center
95. Muditar Organization
96. Myanmar Media Lawyers’ Network
97. Myan ICT for Development Organisation (MIDO)
98. Myanmar Cultural Research Society (MCRS)
99. Myanmar Deaf Society
100. Myanmar Fifth Estate
101. Myanmar Independent Living Initiative
102. Myanmar Muslim Youth Association (Kachin State)
103. Myanmar People Alliance (Shan State)
104. National Network for Education Reform
105. Natural Green Alliance (သဘာဝစိမ်း သဘာဝပါတ်ဝန်းကျင်ထိန်းသိမ်းရေး မိတ်ဖက် အင်အားစု)
106. Never End Tomorrow(NeT)
107. Network for Human Rights Documentation Burma (ND-Burma)
108. Ninggawn Institute (NI)
109. Northern Spectrum Youth Association
110. Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica
111. Open Development Foundation
112. Our Home
113. Our Lovely World
114. Olive Organization
115. P.D.C.E (Peace, Development & Civic Engagement)
116. Paung Ku
117. Pa-O Women’s Union
118. Pan Thi Kyo LGBT Organization
119. Paungsee Myittar Organization
120. Peace & Development Center (Meikhtila)
121. Peace Development Committee (မိတ္ထီလာ)
122. PEN Myanmar (ပဲန်မြန်မာ)
123. Phyu Sin Myittar Social Development Organization
124. Pluralistic Society
125. Pone Yate Sit Regional Development Organization
126. Progressive Voice
127. Pwint Phyu Development Organisation
128. Pyi Gyi Khin
129. Rule of law watch group
130. Rural Social Development Organization
131. SarPhyu Famar Network
132. Sarnar Kyi Phyu Social Development Organization
133. Sandhi Governance Institute
134. Saytana Shaesaung Youth Organization
135. Second Tap Root (ဒုတိယရေသောက်မြစ်)
136. Shan MATA
137. Shan State Ethnic Youth Federation
138. Shan State Peace Task Force (သျှမ်းပြည်နယ်ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးအလုပ်အဖွဲ့)
139. Shan Women Development Network
140. Shan Youth Yangon
141. Shwechinthae Social Service Group (Shwebo)
142. Shwe Nathar Famar Development Organization
143. Smile Myanmar
144. Socio- Economic & Gender Resource Institute
145. Social Care Volunteer Group (SCVG)
146. Southern Youth Development Organisation
147. SPACE
148. Spectrum Organization
149. Student Voice
150. Summer Shelter Library
151. Swam Su Ti Rural Development Organization
152. Ta’ang Women’s Organisation
153. Tai Youth Organization – TYO
154. TEN, Taunggyi Education Network
155. Thazi Youth Network
156. The Seagull: Human Rights, Peace & Development Pluralistic Society
157. The Khumi Institute (TKI)
158. TRI STAR
159. Triangle Women Support Group
160. TRY Organization
161. Uakthon Local Social Development Organization
162. Unity Arch Bridge Organization
163. Waingmaw CSO Network
164. White Marker Group
165. Win Peace
166. Women & Youth’s Development Organization (WYDO)
167. Worker Development Organization
168. Women Development Organization
169. Women organization Network ( WON )
170. Yatanar Youngyi Social Development Organization
171. Yai Ywal Yar Youth Development Organization
172. Yi Ywal Yar Community Development
173. Youth Champion Network
174. Youth/29 Creative Society
175. Young Ni Oo Women Social Development Organization
176. Young Ni Oo Social Development Organization
177. ၈၈ငြိမ်းပွင့် စဉ့်ကူး
178. ၈၈ငြိမ်းပွင့် မြစ်သား
179. ၈၈ငြိမ်းပွင့် မိထ္တီလာ
180. ၈၈ငြိမ်းပွင့် သပိတ်ကျင်း
181. ၈၈ငြိမ်းပွင့် သာစည်
182. ကျောက်ပန်းတောင်း လူငယ်ကွန်ယက်
183. ခြေလှမ်းသစ်လူမှုဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေးအဖွဲ့
184. စိမ်းရောင်စို (တံတားဦး)
185. စိမ်းရောင်စို Activities
186. တမာရိပ်
187. တောင်သမန်ကွန်ယက်
188. ဒို့တိုးတက်ရာ အစည်းအရုံး
189. ဒို့တောင်သူလယ်သမားအဖွဲ့
190. ဒို့မြေကွန်ရက်
191. “ဒို့”တောင်သူလယ်သမားအဖွဲ့အစည်း(ဝမ်းတွင်း)
192. ပျော်ဘွယ် လူငယ်ကွန်ယက်
193. ပွင့်ဖြူလယ်ယာမြေကွန်ရက် (မကွေးတိုင်း)
194. မဇ္စျိမမေတ္တာ ရေလှူအသင်း (မိတ္ထီလာ)
195. မကွေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီးအရပ်ဘက်လူမှုအဖွဲ့အစည်းများ မဟာမိတ်အဖွဲ့
196. မင်းလတောင်သူအစုအဖွဲ့။
197. မတ္တရာ လူငယ်ကွန်ယက်
198. မန္တလေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး လူငယ်ရေးရာကော်မတီ ကိုယ်စားလှယ်များ
199. မကွေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီးလူငယ်ကွန်ယက်
200. မြစ်ကွေ့ဧရာလူမှုကွန်ရက်(မကွေးမြို့)
201. မြေလတ်မျိုးဆက်အင်စတီကျု
202. မြင်းခြံ နိုင်ကျဉ်းအဖွဲ့
203. မြင့်မြတ်ဧရာဝတီ လူငယ်လူမှု့ကွန်ယက်
204. မြေလတ်မျိုးဆက်အင်စတီကျု
205. မေမြို့ တောင်သူကွန်ယက်
206. ယုံကြည်ရာ အသိပညာပြန့်ပွားရေးအသင့်
207. ရွှေခြင်္သေ့တောင်သူကွန်ရက်(ရွှေဘိုခရိုင်)
208. ရွှေခြံအားမာန်အဖွဲ့ မြင်းခြံ
209. ရွှေမင်းသားဖောင်ဒေးရှင်း
210. ရွှေမင်းသား မသန်စွမ်း ဖောင်ဒေးရှင်း ( မြန်မာ )
211. ရှစ်လေးလုံးသွေးသစ် (မိုးညှင်း)
212. လက်လှမ်းမှီရေးအဖွဲ့
213. လွတ်လပ်သောအရှိုချင်အမျိုးသားများအင်အားစု
214. ဝိုင်းမော်မြို့နယ်လုံးဆိုင်ရာ သျှမ်းလူငယ်များစည်းလုံးညီညွတ်ရေးအဖွဲ့
215. ဝါးစိမ်းတောင်ကာကွယ်စောင့်ကြည့်ရေးကော်မတီ (WPWC)
216. သင့်မြတ်လိုသူများ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးပရဟိတအဖွဲ့
217. သုခမိန်အင်စတီကျု
218. သုခုမခရီးသည်အဖွဲ့
219. အမျိုးသမီးနိုင်ငံရေး အင်အားစု
220. အိမ်ယာမဲ့ပြည်သူများ အစည်းအရုံး
221. အောင်သာစည်အဖွဲ့
222. Gender and Development Institute
223. Good Shepherd Myanmar Foundation (GSMF)
224. Kachin Women Peace Network
225. Muditar Foundation
226. Myanmar Positive Women Network
227. Mandalar Yaung Sin
228. Myanmar Independent Living Initiative- MILI
229. National Network of Rural Women- May Doe Kabar
230. Phan Tee Eain (Creative Home)
231. POINT
232. Progetto Continenti
233. Ratana Metta Organization
234. Sex Worker in Myanmar Network
235. Spectrum (SDKN)
236. Socio-Economic & Gender Resource Institute Myanmar
237. Student Christian Movement Myanmar
238. Women’s Federation for Peace
239. Generation Wave