18 October: Telenor has appealed to the Court of Appeal the Asker og Bærum District Court ruling that allowed a class action by former customers in Myanmar. NRK. This is not a conviction. The damages have not been paid. The company is asking the appeal court to test whether the conditions for a group lawsuit are met.

In April, 1,253 former customers filed a civil claim. The total claim, NRK writes: 125 million kroner, 100,000 per person. In September the district court said yes: the conditions for a group action are met. VG, via NTB, reported the same figure and the same court then. Telenor had a month to appeal. It has appealed.

The plaintiffs speak of handing over traffic data — call logs, names, addresses, last known location — to the military junta after the 2021 coup. NRK: after the revelations, Telenor admitted it never once said no to the junta’s requests. Internal documents, still NRK: the company knew customers could be put in danger. That is their account. It is not the judgment.

Thazin Nyunt Aung is one of the claimants. NRK: her husband, politician Phyo Zeya Thaw, was arrested a few weeks after the data handover, then sentenced to death and hanged by the junta. The sequence is hers and the report’s. We have not written that Telenor hanged him. Lawyer Jan Magne Langseth (Simonsen Vogt Wiig): a gap between the public human-rights profile and a strategy of blocking a hearing on the merits.

David Fidjeland, Telenor spokesman: the handover was required by local law; staff risked prison, torture or the death penalty if they did not comply; in the company’s view there is no basis for civil liability. It is ready, he says, to have the underlying questions heard in court, but it disagrees that the class action clears the bar. Joseph Wilde-Ramsing, of SOMO, which has helped the customers: the appeal is “hyklersk”. Professor Terje Einarsen (UiB): it looks bad; this is a partly state-owned firm that may bear serious responsibility. His view. Not a verdict.

An appeal on form. The merits have not been tried. Guilt has not been found.

Image: Diamanten, Telenor’s Fornebu headquarters, 9 October 2013, Bjoertvedt, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The building, not the case file.

Sources consulted: NRK: Gruppesøksmål mot Telenor skal behandles i tingretten — VG/NTB; Telenor lawsuit (re sharing customers’ data with Myanmar’s military government, filed in Norway) — Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.