International Journal of Communication 13(2019) Extreme Speech in Myanmar 3207 Myanmar’s authorities have made it nearly impossible for Rohingya to leave Rakhine State by sea and so ensured the group’s only viable outward migration option is via Bangladesh. Migratory flows have increased following shrinking life opportunities and growing unrest in Rakhine State. This happened in the aftermath of major military operations conducted in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; following communal violence in 2012 and again following military operations in 2016; and most spectacularly following the Myanmar military’s 2017 “clearance operation,” which began in late August 2017 (Amnesty International, 1992; Ware & Laoutides, 2018). This military “clearance operation” was described by the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, as bearing the “hallmarks of genocide,” while the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, said it was a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” (OHCHR, 2018; United Nations, 2017). Claiming to target Muslim militants, the actions of Myanmar’s security forces in northern Rakhine State in late 2017 have been widely criticized by human rights groups and described by Amnesty International (2017) as having created a “human rights and humanitarian catastrophe.” Human Rights Watch (HRW; 2017b, 2017c) considered the military’s actions as amounting to “crimes against humanity,” and the organization documented how almost 300 Rohingya villages had been partially or totally razed during the military campaign. New camp arrivals also frequently described to me how their homes and villages had been burned by Myanmar’s security forces. Despite this, within Myanmar there was little public sympathy for the Rohingya or calls for the military to moderate their actions. Instead, Myanmar’s civilian politicians were either silent or supportive of the military’s approach. Most striking was that the country���s de-facto civilian leader, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, once a vocal critic of Myanmar’s military, seemed to echo the military’s views about the crisis and support their tactics (“Under Fire Over Rohingya,” 2017; Safi, 2017). Media liberalization in a shifting political climate as described in the following contributed significantly to the hostile environment. Media Liberalization and Social Media Growth in a Changing Political Context Myanmar endured decades of military-led rule following the coup in 1962. The military-led government actively closed the country to foreign influences, nationalized industries, and used one of the world’s largest militaries to undertake conflict with ethnic minorities—a conflict, often described as the “world’s longest running civil war,” that is ongoing (Charney, 2009; “Waiting for the Dividend,” 2013; Steinberg, 2010). Throughout this time, Burma/Myanmar had one of the world’s most tightly restricted media environments, and public political expression was severely curtailed (“Chronology of the Press,” 2004; Kyaw Phyo Tha, 2017). Under the military’s stewardship, Burma/Myanmar was brought to near bankruptcy and economic collapse (I. Brown, 2013). By the time the 2010 election took place, Yangon’s streets bore a closer resemblance to early 1960s Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur than those of a modern Asian city. During the years before the 2010 election, a series of protest movements, including the August 1988 “8888 Uprising,” which brought Aung San Suu Kyi to prominence, and the 2007 “Saffron Revolution,” when Buddhist monks joined protests against the government’s economic decisions, indicated that the