144 C. ORJUELA interfaith rallies in Yangon and other cities in Myanmar, with religious leaders advocating for inter-religious tolerance in the context of rising tensions in Rakhine. The message was not only directed to people in Myanmar, but also served to show the international community that heavily criticised state chancellor Aun San Su Kyi did care about inter-religious peace (see Mann 2017). On the one hand, leading government figures in both countries officially endorsed inter-religious tolerance; on the other, hate speech by Buddhist nationalist groups continued with impunity. The peace movement also navigated what some would call the ‘peacebuilding industry’, as Western governments, international NGOs and intergovernmental organisations provided resources for work on peace and inter-religious coexistence. Donor funds were a mixed blessing, though. International donors could provide certain protection and enable more systematic work and capacity building. However, critics would accuse foreign-funded organisations of being bought by the West, spending lavishly, or doing peace work only to earn money (interviews 1; 16; 22). While some peace and interfaith organisations became attractive and established partners to donors, others avoided donor money to protect their credibility, or lacked capacity to receive donor funds. Aid recipients sometimes found themselves negotiating between donor pressure to challenge the Buddhist nationalists and their own assessments of what was feasible and desirable to do. Online movements and countermovements There is […] in Myanmar a very significant crisis on three different fronts now – west, north, east – and I think that the digital part of all this cannot be understated. It is not like these things are happening in Rakhine or Kachin or Shan State and stay there; they are playing out on everyone’s computer right now. (interview 38) A crucial arena for movement and countermovement activity and confrontation is social media. Myanmar has rapidly moved from isolation to extensive connectivity, where almost 90% of the population has access to the internet, many on cheap smart phones.4 In Sri Lanka also, internet use has quickly increased. In both contexts, Facebook is the dominant application and a main source of news. Hate speech has become widespread, and several of the incidents of Buddhist–Muslim violence were preceded by online rumors. One activist in Myanmar worried that ‘people’s adoption of internet has been very, very fast, whereas people’s awareness and capacity [to handle it] is not that great’ (interview 30). News reports about atrocities carried out by Islamists – such as beheadings by IS – often go viral, as do fake stories of attacks in Myanmar. One example is an animated photo of an attack on the famous Buddhist Shwedagon temple in Yangon allegedly by kala, ie Muslims/foreigners (interview 38). The violence in Rakhine further intensified the social media activity that portrays Muslims as threatening. In Sri Lanka, hate speech in social media ranges from the spread of bogus figures of population growth showing that by year 2050 there will be more Muslims than Buddhists in Sri Lanka (interview 1), to explicit calls for violence. That the government shut down social media to curb anti-Muslim violence in March 2018 testifies to its importance. Both Ma Ba Tha and BBS are highly skilled in the use of social media (cf. Schissler 2016; Samarasinge and Hattotuwa 2014). An interviewee in Myanmar said: