JOURNAL OF GENOCIDE RESEARCH 15 harassment of activists by nationalist organizations, including on Facebook, as conse­ quential only for its effects on fundamental rights such as freedom of expression or associ­ ation. But in the context of mobilizing a genocide, the implications of such practices and their chilling effects should be clear. Unique Contributions by Facebook In-group policing of the kind that appears in research on Rakhine State, on hate speech and misinformation, and on freedom of expression involved a host of strategies. Posts on Facebook could be seen as just one tool among many. Yet it is important to analyze how uses of Facebook worked in concert with other strategies, and what unique contributions this may have enabled. The posts below in Figure 5, for example, were made after an orga­ nized peace demonstration in Yangon during May 2018. In the days before the appointed date, nationalist groups had issued public threats against the demonstrators. On the day of, they had assaulted demonstrators while police looked on, until arresting only the peace activists.69 In analyzing this case and others, Ignited argued that activists were facing a dual threat, from the state and its laws and from nationalists and their attacks, on Facebook, in the streets, and even at their homes. The report also argued that the former strengthened the latter, insofar as nationalist groups could operate with relative impunity while activists could not expect assistance from authorities.70 In December 2015, for example, peace workshops involving Buddhists and Muslims in a city where there had recently been violence had to be cancelled after the organizer received threa­ tening text messages. “You want to die? Why are you pressuring our monks?” read one of the messages. The activist eventually had to go into hiding. He also decided against calling the police. “They would just pressure me to stop my work,” he told a journalist. Still, when he did resume work later, his approach was less direct. He took up an issue that affected both sides: waste-disposal.71 Nationalist activity also sometimes helped generate or strengthen state restrictions. The journalist targeted in the post at right in Figure 5, for example, had previously been arrested on spurious charges relating to the use of a camera drone. Nationalists had agitated for stringent penalties against the journalist, who is also Muslim, and his col­ leagues.72 Ultimately, they were only held for a few months, in large part because two col­ leagues were from Malaysia and Singapore.73 But the incident was one of many instances in which individuals and monks affiliated with nationalist organizations intervened in criminal and civil proceedings, both those that involved activists and journalists and those involving more quotidian affairs.74 Often they intervened in cases involving Muslims, but not only. In 2015, for example, the opposition politician Htin Lin Oo was sen­ tenced to two years of hard labour for “insulting religion,” in a speech criticizing nation­ alist monks for stoking hatred. After the talk, nationalist organizations had denounced 69 70 71 72 73 74 Progressive Voice et al., Hate Speech Ignited, 82. Ibid., 74. Francis Wade, “Myanmar: Burma’s Hateful Hard-Line Buddhists,” Time Magazine, 15 December, 2015; also, Rajagopa­ lan, “Internet Trolls Are Using Facebook To Target Myanmar’s Muslims.” Laignee Barron, “Myanmar Detained a Team of Journalists for Flying a Drone,” Time, 30 October 2017. Shoon Naing, “Myanmar Police to Free Journalists in Drone Case,” Reuters, 26 December 2017. C4ADS, Sticks and Stones, 27–8.