40 Hate Speech Ignited: Understanding Hate Speech in Myanmar Figure 9. The signage displaying the motto of the Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population. It states that the earth will not consume a race, but another race could consume and render one extinct. The long history of violence between the Myanmar military and EAOs, paired with renewed international scrutiny, has allowed ultranationalist groups to advance this narrative and assert that it is a national duty of citizens to stand with Myanmar’s civilian government and the Tatmadaw in the face of both internal and external threats.187 Under this narrative, EAOs are viewed as enemies of the state and ungrateful opportunists who are seeking to exploit the current instability to take Myanmar’s resources.188 Furthermore, the story goes that it is the EAOs’ unwillingness to give up arms and ac- cept their share of land and resources that constitutes the nation’s biggest barrier to peace.189 EAOs are also identified in the narrative as representative of their entire ethnic communities, a framing that creates a perception that all displaced individuals and ethnic civilians in conflict areas are deserving of their fate.190 Any time the Tatmadaw is fighting some “enemy,” their community as a whole is treated as traitors. I really feel bad for the Kachin IDPs, Ta’ang, first the Rohingya and now the Rakhine, . . . . [T]hey’re all trapped in the armed conflicts raging around them.191 187 188 189 190 191 002-R4-04, 2; see also A/HRC/39/CRP.2; Beech, “Across Myanmar.” Ibid.; FGD (January 2019 and December 2019); see also John Powell, “Us vs Them: The Sinister Techniques of ‘Othering,’” The Guardian, November 8, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/08/us-vs-them-thesinister-techniques-of-othering-and-how-to-avoid-them. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.