20 Hate Speech Ignited: Understanding Hate Speech in Myanmar Figure 2. Myanmar military propaganda displayed around Myanmar (circa 1990s). Among the ethnic communities that the Tatmadaw vilified, Muslim minorities, especially the Rohingya in Rakhine State, faced particularly harsh attacks. Deemed unassimilable and external to Burmese society, the Rohingya became convenient targets for exclusion. Ultranationalists seeking to exclude the Rohingya as an ethnic minority have often suggested that they are not taiyingtha or “sons of the native land,” an expression that refers to ethnic groups deemed “indigenous” to Myanmar.46 To be included as a taiyingtha, a group must prove that it has existed in Myanmar prior to 1823, the date of the first British occupation.47 Despite their presence in Rakhine State since at least the late eighteenth century, the Rohingya have been deemed as a non-taiyingtha group of foreign interlopers, brought into Myanmar by the British colonialists and denied citizenship rights under the 1982 Myanmar Citizenship Law.48 For the rulers of Myanmar, Buddhist Bamar cultural identity thus became synonymous with the Myanmar national identity, permeating civil, political, and cultural life.49 From the education system to citizenship laws, state policies were designed to maintain Buddhist Bamar privilege and perpetu- ate systemic discrimination and distrust of “others.”50 Under the military government, information was closely controlled, and a nationwide propaganda machine controlled public discussion.51 For ex- ample, the state-controlled media outlets such as the “New Light of Myanmar” celebrated the Tatmad- aw’s military glories against enemies besieging the country.52 As propaganda, these same sources failed to mention the Tatmadaw’s excessive use of force, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearanc46 47 48 49 50 51 52 Nick Cheesman, “How in Myanmar ‘National Races’ Came to Surpass Citizenship and Exclude Rohingya,” Journal of Contemporary 7, no. 3 (2017): 461-83. Ibid. Keck, 67-68. Gravers, 22-25. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.