Myanmar and China have world’s ‘worst environment’ for internet freedom

Freedom on the Net report says Kyrgyzstan showed sharpest downgrade, while Iceland had ‘freest online environment’.

Global internet freedom has declined for the 14th year in a row, with Myanmar and China tied for the world’s worst record, a new study says.

Freedom House, a pro-democracy research group based in the United States, also said in its study on Wednesday that Kyrgyzstan showed the biggest drop in 2024 as President Sadyr Japarov clamped down on online organising and the government moved to silence digital media.

The Kyrgyz authorities shuttered the investigative media website, Kloop, which had reported on allegations by an opposition leader of torture in custody.

The Freedom on the Net (FOTN) report said protections for human rights online diminished in 27 of the 72 countries it covered.

Myanmar became the first country in a decade to match China for a low internet freedom score, the report found. The military government in the Southeast Asian country has cracked down on dissent, imposing systematic censorship and surveillance of online speech.

The report highlighted new measures by the government in May to block access to virtual private networks (VPNs) to bypass internet controls.

China’s low score for internet freedom is rooted in its “great firewall“, which attempts to isolate the country from the rest of the world and block content that poses a threat to the ruling Communist Party.

Asked about the report, China said its people “enjoy various rights and freedoms in accordance with the law”.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mao Ning said: “As for the so-called report, I think it is entirely baseless and made with ulterior motives.”

Other countries that were downgraded include Azerbaijan – the host of next month’s United Nations climate summit – for imprisoning people over social media posts, and Iraq, where a prominent activist was killed after a Facebook post led to protests.

“In three-quarters of the countries covered by FOTN, internet users faced arrest for nonviolent expression, at times leading to draconian prison sentences exceeding 10 years,” Freedom House said.

Meanwhile, Iceland has maintained its status as the “freest online environment” in the world, followed by Estonia, Canada, Chile and Costa Rica.

Zambia had the largest score improvement, and the report found that the country saw a growing space for online activism.

For the first time in 2024, FOTN assessed conditions in Chile and the Netherlands, both of which it said showcased strong safeguards for human rights online.

Elections

For the US, the report highlighted a concern about the lack of safeguards against government surveillance and placed it at 76 of 100 on a scale of the protection of human rights online.

It specifically pointed to action by at least 19 US states against the use of artificial intelligence in election campaigns.

With several more elections, including the November 5 US presidential election, scheduled for the last three months of the year, the report found that the internet has been “reshaped” due to the polls.

“Technical censorship curbed many opposition parties’ ability to reach supporters and suppressed access to independent reporting about the electoral process,” the report said.

It added that “more than a billion voters had to make major decisions about their future while navigating a censored, distorted, and unreliable information space”.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies