UPDATED: The Norwegian Parliament’s disciplinary committee is moving forward with a probe of how the government and Oslo-based telecoms firm Telenor handled its chaotic exit from Myanmar. The Norwegian state is the largest single owner of Telenor, which is charged with having turned over sensitive customer data to local authorities after a military coup on February 1, 2021.
As majority owner of Telenor, with just under 54 percent of its shares, the Norwegian government can get caught up in legal charges facing Telenor and its former wholly owned subsidiary in Myanmar. Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) revealed in August that Telenor, through its Telenor Myanmar Ltd subsidiary, had obeyed a demand from the military junta that still controls Myanmar to deliver the personal telecommunication data of 1,300 customers, or block use of their phones.
Among those affected was Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize 1991 when imprisoned by a former dictatorial government for her efforts to promote freedom and democracy in the former Burma. She could finally collect her Peace Prize in Oslo in 2012, later won election and eventually led a struggling attempt at civilian government when the military grabbed power again five years ago. She was among those quickly jailed and held in custody ever since. After losing her own phone and contact with the outside world, her family has wondered whether she was even still alive. NRK reported on Tuesday that the military junta has claimed Suu Kyi, now more than 80 years old, is alive and in good health.
That hasn’t consoled her family or those of others who now blame Telenor Myanmar for revealing their whereabouts, conversations and other personal telecommunications data at the time of and following the coup. Nearly 500 Telenor customers were exposed, as opponents of the coup, to danger of arrest. A total of more than 20,000 people are believed to have been arrested since the coup, and thousands of others killed. Aung San Suu Kyi’s son Kim Aris told NRK that he found it “shocking … that a Norwegian company could do something like that. Norway, which has always supported my mother.”
Telenor has defended itself on the grounds its management in both Oslo and Myanmar had no choice. “The consequences of refusing orders from the military would have put all our employees in danger,” Jon Omund Revhaug, head of Telenor Myanmar at the time of the coup, told NRK.
Revhaug and other Telenor officials don’t deny that they never said “no” to the military junta. Revhaug said the demands from the military “were so hard” that he doesn’t think there were any examples of refusing to comply.
Telenor has also confirmed that Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s information was turned over, with NRK reporting on company statements that “it’s probable (her phone number) was requested to support the military investigations of potential corruption and organizations tied (to her).” Her son Aris has told NRK that Telenor should “definitely not” have released such information, since they could use it to their advantage and hunt opponents down. “Telenor should have erased the data and left the country,” he told NRK.
Revhaug contends that wasn’t possible. The company’s consideration for its employees came first, he said. He said he could understand Aris’ reaction, “but we faced a power apparatus that was formidable. We don’t have responsibility for what the authorities used the information for.”
That’s what’s now has become a matter for the Parliament to decide, since the state is majority owner of Telenor, its board reports to the government ministry in charge of business and trade (Nærings- og fiskeri departementet), and the ministry reports to the Office of the Prime Minister. The leader of the Parliament’s disciplinary committee, MP Per-Willy Amundsen of the opposition Progress Party, followed NRK’s reports closely and has called the issues raised “extremely serious.”
The committee recently sent a string of questions to both the trade ministry and the foreign ministry, and to the Office of the Prime Minister last month, and is not satisfied with answers received. The government has also refused so far to turn over several of the documents requested by the committee, where a majority supports Amundsen’s dissatisfaction.
Jonas Andersen Sayed of the Christian Democrats Party is among those favouring a probe of Telenor in Myanmar and the government’s response and involvement. “NRK’s revelations show a direct connection between Telenor delivering the mobile data and serious human rights violations,” he told news bureau NTB this week. “This is an extremely serious issue, both for Telenor and for Norway.” He also thinks the government is holding back important documents in the case.
The current Norwegian government, however, claims it can’t reveal documents and “ownership conversations” tied to the the dilemma Telenor faced when under pressure by the junta to hand over customer data. The dilemma was already being publicly debated in Norway in September 2021, and then came a change of government in Norway itself. A Labour-Center coalition government assumed power in October 2021, and Labour alone was re-elected to lead Norway three months ago. The former Conservatives-led government was in power from 2013 to 2021, from the time Telenor launched its operations in Myanmar and through to the coup, when Myanmar’s new military leaders began putting pressure on Telenor. Norway’s current government is reluctant to answer on behalf of the former government.
Telenor became interested in Myanmar as part of a major and later troubled expansion into Asian markets. Its top management at the time said they wanted “to rebuild Burma,” after Norway had lifted sanctions against the country in 2012. Telenor Myanmar Ltd was established by Telenor as a wholly owned subsidiary in September 2014, when the country’s telecoms monopoly ended.
Norway’s Telenor then became one of the largest operators in the country, with more than 16 million customers and around 730 employees at the time of the coup in February 2021. It had also taken on huge risks, as Myanmar stumbled on what Norway had hoped would be a road to democracy. The coup plunged the country back into dictatorship. Former Telenor CEO Sigve Brekke made it clear at that time that the company was “deeply worried” about its employees in Myanmar, confirming Revhaug’s claims.
Telenor entered into a deal six months later, in July 2021, to sell its wholly owned Telenor Myanmar at a huge loss to the Lebanese investment company M1 Group, known for operating in dictatorships. The sale was held up by the new coup leaders, though, and some members of Telenor’s management in Myanmar were even prevented from leaving the country, as pressure on Telenor to release data grew. The sale wasn’t approved until March 18, 2022. It was then quickly completed, on March 25, 2022.
Now Telenor has a new CEO, Benedicte Schilbred Fasmer, and is grappling with heavy losses not just on its former operations in Myanmar but elsewhere in Asia as well. Fasmer recently told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) that “what happened in Myanmar is absolutely a tragedy” for the people of Myanmar, but added that “we experienced a war situation which we tried to handle as best as possible.”
Asked whether Telenor will offer compensation to victims, Fasmer said that “hadn’t been discussed at all,” adding that she doesn’t think any lawsuits will succeed. The company was alerted in October to what can amount otherwise to a class-action lawsuit for illegal sharing of sensitive personal customer information.
The formal plaintiff behind the alert was the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporatins (Somo) in the Netherlands, along with several organizations promoting democracy in Myanmar. Their Norwegian lawyer, Jan Magne Langseth of the law firm Simonsen Vogt Wiig in Oslo, told DN that demands for compensation from Telenor for what happened in Myanmar can amount to “many hundreds of millions of kroner.”
The leader of the disciplinary committee maintains that Telenor’s handling of the situation in Myanmar was “totally unacceptable.” Amundsen said that issue rises above political issues, and he told news bureau NTB on Tuesday that “we must uncover how a state-owned company could cooperate with a brutal military regime (by handing over) customer information about the opposition (in Myanmar).”
While Telenor made its own executive decisions, Amundsen and his committee also want to clarify what role the current government played, and perhaps the former government (of which his Progress Party had been a member). He and Sayed agree that the entire Parliament needs to know whether there were enough steps taken to protect Telenor customers, including those who are threatening to file lawsuits or already have. New questions have been submitted, with a deadline set shortly after the New Year.
That should please others who’ve been calling for an investigation, including Norway’s Helsinki Committee and author Nicolai Prydz. They’re worried about Norway’ reputation as a champion of human rights, and so are several Norwegian professors. Many note it’s a paradox that a company from Norway, known for promoting human rights and democracy, ended up cooperating with a violent military regime that also resulted in the re-imprisonment of a Nobel Peace Prize winner, always chosen by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Aftenposten, Norway’s largest newspaper, has editorialized that Telenor’s operations in Myanmar should be examined and investigated. Other MPs, including Tage Pettersen of the Conservatives, had also asked the Parliament’s disciplinary committee to investigate, especially Telenor’s negotiations or contact with the military junta in Myanmar. “It’s a good idea to clarify the role the Norwegian state has played in this issue,” wrote Aftenposten.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
