4/5/22, 3:23 PM Hate speech, atrocities and fake news: the crisis in Myanmar | Financial Times The sympathy the Rohingya have received in the outside world has inflamed anti-Muslim sentiments inside Myanmar, where most of the public agree with the official line that the country is under attack from terrorists and separatists. “Views inside and outside the country of what happened in Rakhine are not just different, they are diametrically opposed,” Thant Myint-U, the historian, told me. “Perceptions of the crisis have been veering in opposite directions for some time, but it’s the violence of the past year, and the vastly different narratives around what actually happened, that’s created an almost unbridgeable divide.” Muslims — who make up 4 per cent of the Views about Rakhine inside and outside the country are diametrically opposed Thant Myint-U, historian population — have been part of the country’s social fabric since long before independence in 1948. But from the 1970s, they began to face growing restrictions on many of their basic rights, including in some cases citizenship and a 2015 law that allows private third parties to block mixedfaith marriages. Radical monks have spread hatred of Islam. In March 2015, the US Holocaust Museum commissioned a report on what it called “early warnings of genocide in Burma”. It focused primarily on the Rohingya, and mentioned the denial of citizenship, movement restrictions and “rampant hate speech” they faced. The Rohingya are now largely a people in exile — well over half of their previolence population are abroad. However, human-rights advocates say there is a lingering risk both to those who remain and to the roughly one million nonRohingya Muslims who still live in Myanmar’s Buddhist heartland. “The growth of hatred is very strong,” says Kyaw Win, a Muslim exile based in the UK, whose Burma Human Rights Network has documented the plight of Muslims in Myanmar. “Anything could trigger bloodshed. I have been saying since 2012 that Burma could become a second Bosnia or Rwanda, and it’s happening right now.” I’ve been saying since 2012 that Burma could become a second Bosnia, and it’s happening Kyaw Win, Burma Human Rights Network https://www.ft.com/content/2003d54e-169a-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 8/19