Han Nyein Oo
Han Nyein Oo (Burmese: ဟန်ငြိမ်းဦး; born Soe Naing (စိုးနိုင်), in 1989), is a Burmese social media personality, pro-military supporter and lobbyist. Before the Myanmar coup d'état, he was considered one of the main sources for Burmese celebrity gossip and yellow journalism.[1]
Career
He started his career as a celebrity gossip reporter on Facebook. After having been banned from Facebook, he moved his commentary to Telegram.[2] Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, he became a lobbyist for the junta. Han Nyein Oo had more than 100,000 subscribers on Telegram. He has been accused of using revenge porn against female activists whom he opposes.[1][3][4]
Han Nyein Oo has been accused of engaging police officers and military troops to ordering them to make arrests and carry out attacks on anti-junta activists and supporters of NUG.[2] Han Nyein Oo has investigated and conveyed personal information of anti-military dissidents, NUG supporters and donors of PDF.[5][6]
His channel became increasingly influential among the highest military council and lower-level military authorities.[7]
He posted about shop owners who have notified on social media that the store would be closed on February 1 on which the silent strike would be conducted. This led to the arrest of 200 people including shop owners.[8]
In February 2022, the film director Wyne and model Thin Thin were arrested after he posted their information.[5] Model Thin Thin has sued Han Nyein Oo for posting her gossips on Facebook in 2020. He was charged under Section 66 (d) of the telecommunications law, which outlaws online defamation.[9]
As a main source for arrest news, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and many Burmese civil society groups are monitoring Han Nyein Oo's reports. Political activists who were disclosed on the channel in January and February were arrested by military authorities within hours. Victims have also had their homes and business property confiscated. According to RFA, due to Han Nyein Oo's reports more than 200 people have been arrested and have had their property confiscated, including notably Pencilo, Mg Mg Aye, Chan Chan, Daung, Chit Thu Wai and Paing Phyo Thu.[10][5]
Writer Naing Thint Myat urges the public to oppose the military's arrest of activists by order of Han Nyein Oo.[11] Deputy minister of Information Major General Zaw Min Tun said at a military press conference that Han Nyein Oo was not affiliated with the military and did not order him.[5]
On 12 March 2022, Telegram removed the channels of Han Nyein Oo and Thazin Oo because of standards violations.[12]
On 19 April 2022, the comedian Kaung Kyaw was arrested by military forces two days after Han Nyein Oo's report.[13]
References
- ^ a b "Revenge Porn Has Become a Political Weapon in Myanmar". The Diplomat. 9 August 2021.
- ^ a b "'Online mob' assists silent strike crackdown". Frontier Myanmar. 31 January 2022.
- ^ "လက်စားချေ အပြာဗီဒီယိုများသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် နိုင်ငံရေးလက်နက်ဖြစ်နေ". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 12 August 2021.
- ^ "Telegram Has a Serious Doxing Problem". Wired UK. 20 September 2022.
- ^ a b c d "စစ်ကောင်စီအပေါ် သြဇာကြီးလာတဲ့ သတင်းပေး Telegram အကောင့်များ (Telegram account who influenced on military council)". Radio Free Asia. 3 March 2022.
- ^ "ထိလွယ်ရှလွယ်ကိစ္စတွေနဲ့ သွေးဆူအောင်ဆွနေတဲ့လော်ဘီတွေ Telegram မှာ ဘယ်လိုဝါဒဖြန့်နေလဲ". Mizzima (in Burmese). 27 December 2021.
- ^ "စစ်ကောင်စီဝါဒဖြန့် တယ်လီဂရန်ချန်နယ် နှစ်ခု အပိတ်ခံရ". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). 11 March 2022.
- ^ "Myanmar junta using social media to track its opponents". Radio Free Asia. 3 March 2022.
- ^ "အလှမယ် သင်းသင်းအား ဧည့်စာရင်းအကြောင်းပြ ဝင်ရောက်ဖမ်းဆီး". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 23 February 2022.
- ^ "Myanmar junta using social media to track its opponents". Radio Free Asia. 3 March 2022.
- ^ "လင်းလင်း၊ ချစ်သုဝေ အပါအဝင် လူသိများသူအချို့ နေအိမ်များ ချိပ်ပိတ်ခံရ". The Irrawaddy. 18 February 2022.
- ^ "Spring Revolution Daily News for 13 March 2022". Mizzima. 13 March 2022.
- ^ "လူရွှင်တော် ကောင်းကျော်ကို စစ်ကောင်စီတပ် အင်အားအများအပြားဖြင့် ဖမ်းဆီး". DVB (in Burmese). 20 April 2022.