Lawsuit in Norway alleges Telenor shared Myanmar customer data with military junta

A class-action lawsuit filed in Norway alleges that Telenor shared customer data with Myanmar’s military regime, exposing activists and opposition figures to arrest and abuse after the 2021 coup.

The case claims data belonging to 1,253 customers, including addresses and last-known locations, was passed on by the telecoms company, formerly Myanmar’s largest operator. The lawsuit argues Telenor failed to protect those affected and did not inform them of military data requests.

One of the complainants, anti-coup activist Aung Thu, said military interrogators sought information on him after torture failed to make him betray fellow activists. Documents obtained by Norwegian state broadcaster NRK and shared with the Guardian show his number was listed in a request made in September 2021, when he was already in prison.

Aung Thu said: “Some of the people I worked with have disappeared; I can’t find any trace of them. Some are untraceable; some were among those arrested – people who were in contact with me.”

He was first jailed in September 2021 and charged with incitement for his role in the “spring revolution”, the resistance movement that emerged after the February 2021 military coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Aung Thu said he was released in a prisoner amnesty in October, only to be re-arrested at the prison gates and charged under counter-terrorism laws. He said this followed the release of his data by Telenor in late September, despite an internal company assessment acknowledging that the order was likely to lead to arrests.

The Justice and Accountability Initiative, a Swedish rights organisation, launched the case on 8 April with support from the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations and the Open Society Justice Initiative. The claim seeks at least €11m in compensation on behalf of all 1,253 affected customers unless they opt out. Telenor had 18 million customers before leaving Myanmar in 2022.

Joseph Wilde-Ramsing, advocacy director at Somo, said: “Telenor went into the country saying you should trust us – they did that and that trust was breached and they’ve faced severe consequences. Even those not physically harmed have had to go underground, they’ve had to run.”

NRK has reported that people whose information was allegedly passed on include Aung San Suu Kyi and Phyo Zeya Thaw, a former MP from her party who was executed by the military. Tha Zin, Phyo Zeya Thaw’s wife, is also a complainant. She said her husband was arrested in a safehouse where they had been hiding only three weeks after his data was requested from Telenor.

Telenor’s website lists orders it complied with in Myanmar, including blocking Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, blocking websites and shutting down the network. Digital rights activists have said the military imposed a digital “iron curtain” through these measures, targeting dissidents and opposition politicians and restricting information from conflict zones.

Nini Sandborg, a human rights lawyer who worked for the UN in Myanmar, said the company had portrayed itself as trustworthy in Myanmar and that activists probably believed an international operator would protect them. She said: “[Instead] they sent every second, every little detail of every telecom data they had on the users. To the point that it was days and hours from the details that the junta received to them coming to actual houses, picking up young politicians, and detaining them.”

A Telenor spokesperson said the company shared historical metadata, not the content of calls or messages, because it was legally obliged to do so. The spokesperson added: “Our employees were working under extremely difficult and uncertain conditions, with direct pressure from the authorities and a highly volatile security situation. We could not take risks with our employees’ safety – their lives were at stake.”

Telenor said there was no established direct link between its handling of the military’s requests and human rights violations.

The case has also intensified scrutiny in Norway. The government said it held 27 meetings with Telenor officials between the coup and the company’s withdrawal from Myanmar, but that operational decisions were made by the board, which was expected to respect human rights.

Per Willy Amundsen, a Progress party politician and former justice minister, said the potential complicity of Telenor and the government in human rights abuses was damaging to Norway’s self-image. He said: “A lot of people see that this does not fit the image that we have of ourselves and, at least used to have, abroad, as a defender of peace and human rights. It’s really important that this cannot happen again.”