Cloudflare: stop shielding the Myanmar military

Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare

Demand that Cloudflare stop shielding the Myanmar military

Cloudflare provides website services for the military-controlled Ministry of Home Affairs and Myanmar police force. Cloudflare protects and shields the websites of the security forces that are attacking, injuring, and killing young people peacefully protesting on the streets of Myanmar.

Cloudflare should not be providing services for the Burmese military or for military-controlled companies. No company which has a client such as the Myanmar military, which is holding coups and is involved in genocide, can claim to have any kind of credible human rights or social responsibility policies.

In the past, Cloudflare has terminated its services for the American neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website and the 8chan website, used by American white supremacists. Yet, Cloudflare continues to protect the websites of the Myanmar military as it executes its ongoing genocide of the Rohingya people as well as its atrocities against other ethnic minorities, most notably the Kachin, Shan, Rakhine, and Karen.

In December 2018 Burma Campaign UK placed Cloudflare on its "Dirty List" of companies linked to Burma's military. In the past, Cloudflare has defended providing services for the website of Myanmar army chief Min Aung Hlaing. According to the company, it only stopped protecting the website of Min Aung Hlaing when Cloudflare deemed it was legally required to do so.

For More Information:

"Cloudflare must terminate its services for the Myanmar military," International Campaign for the Rohingya and Burma Campaign UK, 8 February 2021

Burma Campaign UK publishes a 'Dirty List' of more than 100 international companies doing business with the military. The 'Dirty List' is available here.

To: Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare
From: [Your Name]

I demand that Cloudflare immediately stop shielding the websites of the Myanmar military and security forces.

According to the Cloudfare website, your company "is on a mission to help build a better Internet." A better world, free of genocide and gross human rights abuses by governments against their citizens is a requirement for "a better Internet." With that in mind, working with the military and police in Myanmar is the antithesis of your stated goal. United Nations investigators have said doing any form of business with the Myanmar military is indefensible.

In the United States, Cloudflare dropped several clients due to their actions at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Those clients include Stormfront and 8chan.

If Cloudflare is serious about making a "better Internet," it needs to apply the same standards to entities outside of the United States that it uses with American companies.