Myanmar: Corporate Complicity in the Spotlight

# What happened On 15 September Norwegian police and security services raided the Oslo headquarters of Telenor, the multinational telecoms company majority owned by the Norwegian state. Authorities say the company may have aided and abetted crimes against humanity and breached sanctions in relation to its former operations in Myanmar.

Telenor sold its Myanmar subsidiary in March 2022 after the military coup that ousted the elected government in February 2021. Reporting by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation in August 2025 alleged that, before the sale, Telenor complied with military requests to hand over customer data including call logs and location information. Civil society groups say that data could have helped the military track, capture and kill democracy activists, including campaigner Ko Jimmy, who was executed in July 2022.

# Investigations, complaints and legal action Civil society has pursued several accountability routes. Justice for Myanmar worked with the International Commission of Jurists to gather documents and filed police complaints in December 2024 and October 2025. In October 2025 a group of civil society organisations sued Telenor, alleging the company passed on data related to more than 1,200 people. The company has also been found in breach of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct.

# The wider picture: states, tech firms and elections Myanmar's junta. Several non-democratic states have provided political backing and material support to the military leadership since the coup. Russia hosted junta leader Min Aung Hlaing in Moscow and is a principal backer. China, India, Singapore and Thailand are named among countries supplying weapons.

Chinese-linked tech firms are implicated in building systems for surveillance and censorship. One company, Geedge Networks, reportedly helped the junta install a version of China's internet controls to restrict access, gather data and identify dissenters.

# Shifting international responses

# Why this matters now The Telenor raid refocuses attention on how corporate decisions and foreign partnerships can enable repression. Myanmar's civil war has continued for more than five years with major humanitarian consequences. The unfolding legal and criminal inquiries in Norway could clarify where corporate responsibility intersects with state-driven human rights abuses and whether accountability can extend to companies that operated under coercive conditions.