Digital rights activists in Southeast Asia increasingly at risk

Online censorship, digital surveillance, and harassment have become the daily norm for many young human rights defenders and activists in Southeast Asia. Those who speak up online are increasingly having to contend with the digital — as well as physical — threats that activism often comes with, human rights experts say.

“Digital safety in the region is becoming more concerning,” said Sothoeuth Ith, media director at the Cambodian Center for Independent Media.

While activism — especially in the areas of human rights, democracy, and the environment — in itself is nothing new, COVID-19 has pushed a lot of it online, said Darika Bamrungchok, community manager at Security Matters, a nonprofit working to protect the digital and physical security of at-risk groups.

At the same time, younger defenders are increasingly using social platforms to organize, explained Marcin de Kaminski, security and innovation director at international human rights organization Civil Rights Defenders.

For example, the #MilkTeaAlliance, a youth-led, pro-democracy movement made up of “netizens” from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Myanmar, originated on Twitter.

#WhatsHappeningInMyanmar and #WhatsHappeningInThailand have also become popular hashtags as activists bring attention to atrocities amid the conflict in Myanmar and the youth-led protests in Thailand.

While the internet has created another platform for activists, it has also opened up an additional avenue for them to be attacked. Physical attacks and arrests are already commonplace. In 2020, 29 environmental activists were killed in the Philippines, eight human rights defenders were killed in Myanmar in 2021, and there was global outrage when four pro-democracy activists were sentenced to death and immediately executed last month.

Youth, according to a 2021 report commissioned by the United Nations Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, are among the groups considered most exposed to “threats, harassment, violence and other forms of human rights violations because of their age and the nature of their civic engagement.”

But de Kaminski highlighted that environmental activists, including Indigenous peoples, are another group being attacked more both online and offline. Of the activists killed in 2020, over a third were Indigenous people. In an email, spokesperson for the Prey Lang Community Network — a Cambodian community group that monitors and protects the Prey Lang rainforest from illegal logging and destruction — said it was because Indigenous peoples are considered to be isolated and can lack digital literacy skills.

Digital attacks and their perpetrators

This wave of digital threats can include online surveillance, censorship, and repression alongside sophisticated hacking — such as infecting activists’ phones and laptops with spyware — and is usually followed up with offline attacks, de Kaminski said.

Benny Agus Prima, program manager for the human rights defenders at the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, told of an Indonesian activist who had their social media accounts hacked. The hacker posted messages that gave authorities cause to detain them.

More often than not, authorities are the perpetrators of digital attacks, Prima said. “A lot of times defenders are sharing the bitter truth of what’s happening in a country,” he said. As a result, governments may then engage in judicial harassment, Bamrungchok explained.

For example, in 2020, 14 environmental youth activists were "baselessly" charged with incitement after they organized via a Facebook group and took part in a protest that called out the exploitation of land rights along the Vietnamese border.

Elsewhere in the region, authorities have used a variety of laws to make speaking out difficult for young people. In response to the civil disobedience movement that was triggered by the military coup in Myanmar in 2021, the junta banned the use of Facebook while a new cybersecurity law that would forbid the use of virtual private networks is being floated. Cambodia’s Ministry of Information has also announced it's expanding its online monitoring to include TikTok, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram. It also intends to implement what they’re calling a National Internet Gateway. 

“Once it is implemented, this NIG is likely to facilitate mass surveillance, the interception and censorship of digital communications, and the collection of personal data, thus threatening individuals’ ability to exercise their rights to privacy and other fundamental freedoms,” said Chak Sopheap, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, adding that this could impact journalists, human rights defenders, activists, and opposition members.

Such laws don’t serve the public interest, Ith said, "but rather loosely provide too much authority to the government to control the digital platform that is one of the new mediums for people to exercise their rights and advocate for better service of good governance.”

The risk of digital attacks could be enough to undermine activism efforts, according to the 2021 “Ground Safe” report. Digital safety is critical to sustaining activism, Bamrungchok said. Below are three ways in which human rights defenders can improve their digital safety.

Engage in practical training

Human rights defenders, activists, and civil society organizations must be aware of the potential threats they face, Bamrungchok said, and focus on preventing them rather than being reactive to incidents when they’ve already happened.

The lack of resources and provision of adequate digital literacy training to provide protection and awareness is a crucial factor in the escalation of attacks and harassment, David Berger, program coordinator at the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, told Devex in an email. He called for more contextually and culturally appropriate resources and tools to enhance digital literacy and resilience. He cited HR violation documentation tools, such as Totem Project and Tactical Tech’s Digital Enquirer Kit, as well as other useful online resources such as Open Briefing’s Holistic Security Toolkit and the Digital First Aid Kit.

CCIM has also established a digital rights working group, which runs workshops on digital rights for CSOs, while the nonprofit Security Matters provides digital safety training alongside real-time assistance via a helpdesk for those in Thailand and Malaysia.

Each session is tailored to the specific activist because different activists face different risks and threats, said Bamrungchok.

Initial advice might include how to implement secure passwords, install two-factor authentication, or use a VPN and secure communications technologies, such as Signal. According to the 2021 “Ground Safe” report, less than 45% of Indonesian human rights defenders are confident in using secure tools.

“It’s important to understand what kind of personal information you are giving away when you are on a platform, to what extent you can control it [and] limit it, and how we can create a culture where everyone is aware of the importance of being digitally safe,” Prima said. “Where are you storing your data? Are you aware that some data is sensitive?” he added.

Collect data on threats

For Berger, improving digital safety for activists also means having more state and civil society reported data on the frequency of violations. “This lack of tools and data severely undermines our ability to monitor the situation of Indigenous, land, and environmental defenders,” he wrote.

While killings of activists are often recorded, Berger explained, they can be the final step in threats and attacks against HRDs. Digital attacks often escalate or act as precursors to physical violence, he added.

IWGIA, with the Alliance for Land, Indigenous and Environmental Defenders coalition, is working to encourage the recording of all types of threats and attacks, including the hacking of digital communications, websites, social media accounts, and the use of digital surveillance.

If more data is available, it will increase awareness. This in turn could lead to increased investment into tools for activists and defenders to better protect themselves. Enhanced funding and support could be directed toward “rapid response mechanisms which can provide emergency support to defenders and their families when digital threats are received, to prevent escalations which may result in killing,” Berger said.

Push for accountability

He also stressed the need for legal frameworks that would allow for the persecution of attacks and threats to be implemented. “Specific attention must be given to ensuring safeguards to prevent abuse of these laws and frameworks to persecute Indigenous Peoples, youth, and human rights defenders.”

IWGIA, he explained, is contributing to research on criminalization and the misuse of cybersecurity and anti-terrorism laws used to criminalize the lawful and peaceful protests and participation of Indigenous peoples in the online space while CCHR is part of the ASEAN regional coalition to #StopDigitalDictatorship in Southeast Asia. It denounces rights violations taking place in the digital space and provides recommendations to uphold online freedom of expression and privacy rights.

“Policies and laws that threaten digital safety and hamper the online exercise of fundamental freedoms should be called out by civil society organizations,” Sopheap said.

Visit the Generation Why series for more coverage on how we can ensure the digital space advances the rights of all young people and leaves no one behind. You can join the conversation using the hashtags #DevexSeries on #DigitalRights.