Photo by Dying Regime via CC 2.0
The dramatic growth in the use and availability of mobile broadband in South and Southeast Asia has meant unprecedented access to new tools like email, messaging apps, and social media for the region’s human rights defenders. But, despite their utility, these services have also been used, with increased frequency, to attack and intimidate those fighting injustice, including female journalists, indigenous youth, and LGBTQ activists, among others.
EngageMedia, a leading nonprofit defending and advancing digital rights in the Asia-Pacific, set out to research how restrictions on internet freedom, along with digital attacks, affect the promotion of human rights and democracy. As part of this research, EngageMedia adapted RDR’s human rights standards to zero in on the policies of the telecommunications companies providing these services directly to human rights defenders across the region. With governments failing in their duty of protection, corporate accountability has become an increasingly important tool for civil society looking to enhance digital rights.
The results were released in the organization’s recent report Through The Looking Glass: Digital Safety and Internet Freedom in South and Southeast Asia. The report starts off by highlighting the threats to human rights defenders, their knowledge gaps around digital safety, and the failure of existing government legislation to protect them or promote broader internet freedom in a context of growing online harassment.
The Big Telco Subsidiaries Operating Across Southeast Asia
EngageMedia then turns to the specific companies operating within this troubling context for digital rights. The report uses a subset of key standards from the 2020 RDR Corporate Accountability Index methodology relevant to telcos to measure key policies connected to freedom of expression and privacy.
RDR partnered with EngageMedia, along with local organizations in their network (under the auspices of the Greater Internet Freedom Consortium) to examine a total of 12 mobile operators across six countries. Local civil society organizations in these countries created country-specific reports covering Cambodia, Indonesia, the Maldives, Nepal, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. This marks the first time that our methodology has been used to measure companies operating in any of these countries.
Four out of the 12 telcos evaluated are owned by the same parent company, Axiata Group, one of the largest networks in Asia. The report evaluated Axiata’s subsidiaries in Sri Lanka (Dialog), Nepal (NCell), Cambodia (Smart), and Indonesia (XL Axiata). In the 2020 RDR Index, Axiata ranked 9th (out of 12) due to a lack of disclosure in all three of our categories: governance, freedom of expression, and privacy. When it comes to Axiata’s subsidiaries, unfortunately, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And the same can be said of Ooredoo Maldives, a subsidiary of the Qatari telecommunications company Ooredoo, which ranked last among the 12 telcos we evaluated in the 2020 RDR Index.
From Network Shutdowns to Zero Rating: Two Barriers to Internet Free Speech
Two of the most important issues RDR monitors with regard to telcos and human rights are network management, which includes respect for net neutrality, and network shutdowns. Network shutdowns are an issue of a growing concern across the Asia–Pacific region. The report found a few generic references to network shutdowns in the companies’ terms of service (indicating, for example, that services may be unavailable in cases of maintenance, repairs, and natural disasters, or other circumstances of force majeure). Such was the case for Nepal Telecom, Ooredoo Maldives, Smart Philippines, and Telkomsel Indonesia.
But none of these companies explained how they respond to government demands, never mind providing any commitment to push back against government shutdown requests. In 2021, the #KeepItOn campaign, a coalition of global civil society organizations working to end network shutdowns, recorded a total of 129 internet shutdowns in India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China. With governments increasingly exerting their power to control or limit internet access altogether, transparency from telecommunications companies on network shutdowns is more important than ever.
The companies also failed to publish commitments to respect net neutrality, with half of the companies evaluated actually engaging in zero-rating. Six of the mobile operators evaluated offer different kinds of plans or add-ons that enable access to social networks, messaging apps, video streaming, and entertainment platforms without reaching a data cap.
Rights-based advocacy aimed at the private sector is rare in the region. In completing this report, one of EngageMedia’s primary goals was to help local organizations leverage their findings to build and strengthen relationships with telcos and, in doing so, help raise the bar on human rights adherence. Through this work, EngageMedia is hoping to enhance digital safety for all users, but particularly for those fighting on other essential human rights fronts across the region, from the LGBTQ community to student activism.
We invite you to download and read EngageMedia’s report here. You can also follow them on Twitter @EngageMedia.
If you’re also interested in learning more about the local organizations involved in the research, you can access their websites below:
- Cambodia – Cambodian Center for Independent Media
- Indonesia – Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM)
- Maldives – Society for Peace and Democracy
- Nepal – Digital Rights Nepal
- Philippines – Out of The Box Media Literacy Initiative Inc.
- Sri Lanka – Hashtag Generation
This report joins the collection of research projects that have adapted our methodology and standards beyond RDR’s own Big Tech and Telco Giants rankings. You can browse all the adaptations that have been published to date. If you’re interested in carrying out your own research using our methods and standards, please write to us at partnerships@rankingdigitalrights.org.
