It’s official, 2024 was the worst year on record for internet shutdowns. From backsliding democracies to brutalizing military regimes, ruling powers across Asia Pacific are increasingly deploying internet shutdowns as weapons to control, contain, and quash people’s voices.

Launching today, February 24, 2025, Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition’s new report, Emboldened offenders, endangered communities: internet shutdowns in 2024, exposes how authorities imposed at least 296 internet shutdowns in 54 countries, causing chaos across borders, exacerbating trauma during conflict, and fracturing the lives of millions of people around the globe. The findings reveal that 202 shutdowns were imposed in 11 countries or territories in Asia Pacific in 2024 — the highest number of shutdowns ever recorded in a single year for the region.

Shutdowns destabilise societies, undermine digital progress, put entire communities at risk, and provide a cloak of impunity for human rights abuses. Authorities from Myanmar to Pakistan are isolating people from the rest of the world with impunity, reflecting the rising digital authoritarianism in Asia. No matter what method — cable cuts, orders to telcos, or confiscating equipment — shutdowns are never acceptable. The international community must come together and act now to end shutdowns permanently.

Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Pacific Policy Director at Access Now

Key regional findings:

• The world leaders: with a total of 190 shutdowns, Myanmar, India, and Pakistan together accounted for over 64% of all recorded shutdowns in 2024;
• The new leader: more shutdowns were imposed in Myanmar (85) than anywhere else in the world, with the military junta being the largest shutdown perpetrator in the country;
• The disconnected democracy: with 84 recorded shutdowns, Indian authorities were head and shoulders above any other democratic government in issuing shutdown orders;
• The new offenders:  Malaysia and Thailand joined the shame list of shutdown perpetrators in 2024, with Malaysia blocking access to Grindr in the country and Thailand disconnecting internet service for people in Myanmar and Laos;
• The violence: of all the shutdowns recorded in Myanmar, 31 coincided with documented grave human rights abuses and at least 17 of shutdowns imposed by the junta correlated with airstrikes on civilians. Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s government imposed a string of five shutdowns during the student protests as part of their violent crackdown that killed over a thousand people; and
• Alarming developments: both Thailand and China disconnected people in Myanmar by imposing six shutdowns in total, one of which also affected people in Laos.

For the fourth consecutive year, the Myanmar military remained one of the world’s worst perpetrators of internet shutdowns in 2024 — clear evidence of the junta’s blatant disregard for international human rights order and increasing weaponization of connectivity to disempower people in Myanmar. To tear down the military’s digital iron curtain and champion the people’s cause, governments, private sector, and civil society organizations around the world, must go beyond words — they must take decisive action.

Wai Phyo Myint, Asia Pacific Policy Analyst at Access Now

In 2024, shutdowns were implemented across Asia Pacific in: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Caledonia, and Pakistan.

Download the full report.