Lawsuit in Norway alleges Telenor passed on data helping Myanmar military arrest 1,200 activists, some in safe houses
W
hen even two weeks of torture could not force Aung Thu to betray his fellow anti-coup activists, his military interrogators in Myanmar tried something different: they asked a Norwegian telecoms company, Telenor, then the largest one operating in the country, for its data on him.
The company – whose majority shareholder is the Norwegian government – had first entered Myanmar in 2013 as it was transitioning to democracy, promising to connect users who had been isolated from the world.
Aung Thu and other activists now feel they were betrayed, and a new class-action lawsuit alleges that the data of more than 1,200 customers, including addresses and last-known locations, was passed on by the company to the regime.
