4/5/22, 3:23 PM Hate speech, atrocities and fake news: the crisis in Myanmar | Financial Times The website, which publishes in English and Burmese, has covered all of Myanmar’s big moments, from the “Saffron Revolution” in 2007 to Cyclone Nargis in 2008 to the triumph of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy in 2015. As the military “clearance operations” targeting Rohingya unfolded, impartial information was at a premium. Authorities had closed northern Rakhine state, the centre of the violence, to journalists, who resorted to tracking fires from across the river in Bangladesh. The arriving Rohingya told stories of shootings, machete attacks and rapes by security forces and civilians that were to precipitate one of the fastest mass movements of people in modern times. But while the western press covered the violence widely, regular readers of The Irrawaddy’s English-language website noted some puzzling changes. The publication, which had previously been criticised by nationalists for its robust reporting on the persecuted minority, had started to label them as “self-identifying Rohingya”. Rohingya is a loaded word in Myanmar and rejected by nationalist Bamars, the ethnic group who dominate government and public life and see the minority as illegal “Bengali” immigrants. Rohingya refugees arriving in Dakhinpara, Bangladesh, in September 2017, after fleeing the military crackdown in Rakhine state © Getty https://www.ft.com/content/2003d54e-169a-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 2/19