Myanmar junta cancels more than 470,000 Mandalay SIM cards since August but arrests just 42 in 2026 online scam cases

Mizzima

Myanmar’s military regime has permanently deactivated more than 470,000 SIM cards in Mandalay Region since August, even as arrests for online scams across the region in 2026 stand at just 42 suspects.

The scale of the deactivations was disclosed by Colonel Nay Lin Soe, the region’s Security and Border Affairs Minister, at the fourth regular session of the Mandalay Region Hluttaw on 24 September. He said the cards had been connected to cyber scams and illegal slot-gambling schemes operated through Viber, SMS and Telegram, and linked to online financial fraud and human trafficking.

The junta cited two legal instruments as the basis for the deactivations: Sections 33(d) and 38 of the Electronic Transactions Law, and the Online Fraud Law enacted on 31 July 2026. Actual arrests recorded over three years were far smaller than the deactivation figure. Colonel Nay Lin Soe reported seven cases involving 116 suspects in 2024, two cases involving five suspects in 2025, and four cases involving 42 suspects so far in 2026. Chinese nationals were among those detained each year.

Since seizing power in the February 2021 coup, the military has steadily extended state control over Myanmar’s telecommunications sector. A mandatory biometric SIM-card registration system introduced from 2022 required every user to link their phone number to their identity. Earlier this year the regime added mandatory International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) registration of handsets, and in July it imposed compulsory mobile phone registration on international travellers entering the country.

Rights groups have warned since 2022 that Myanmar’s biometric SIM and device registration systems are open to surveillance uses far broader than the anti-fraud framing offered by the regime. Privacy International has described the wider registration scheme as “dangerous,” and the Myanmar Internet Project earlier this year said the IMEI system would deepen the junta’s ability to track users. The regime has not published data on how the 470,000 users identified for deactivation were selected, whether any appeal mechanism exists, or how many of the cancelled numbers belonged to individuals not connected to any prosecution.

The expansion of the anti-scam legal framework has come as the regime faces sustained pressure from Beijing over Chinese-run scam compounds operating along Myanmar’s border regions, where thousands of trafficked workers have been held. The Mandalay case tally recorded by Colonel Nay Lin Soe does not include any of the operations at those border compounds, and the regime has not identified where the operations run out of the cancelled Mandalay numbers were based.