Off i e afe Participants reported feeling less vulnerable offline as compared to online Nonetheless fears of offline intimidation harassment physical harm and racism still existed These concerns are inevitably tied to an individual s online presence Interviewees reported intimidation and surveillance increasing when they organize activities such as workshops or trainings outside the Yangon capital region Police have shown up uninvited to these types of activities In such instances the authorities have joined the activities without asking for permission and later asked for personal information such as where the organizers are staying and their agenda Some of the participants particularly the activists and journalists have experienced having their family members friends and the partners intimidated by the police from the Special Branch There have been several events where the police from the Special Branch have also visited the homes of activists or their parents and intimidated family members asking for personal information such as what they do and their phone numbers Ph ical ha m a d h ea l ed e At the beginning of the NLD government many study participants felt safe As time passed however these individuals started to feel different Fears of being surveilled due to the nature of their work as well as worries over the implementation of the SMMT became more common Concerns over physical harm came to a head when U Ko Ni a prominent member of Myanmar s Muslim minority and legal adviser for the NLD was assassinated in January 2017 In the wake of the assasation interviewees became far more aware of threats to their physical security Although participants generally reported feeling safer offline than online a few still expressed significant fear of offline physical violence This fear was also tied to concerns related to their friends and family s security As one interviewee said They the Special Intelligence Department of the police also threaten friends and family There have been a lot of cases and that the amount of pressure and the intimidation on the family is more concerning and stressful for me It is even worse for the women activists They would threaten via Messenger calls Ge de ba ed ha a me One third of the women activists who were interviewed reported We are being harassed relentlessly because we are women The rest of the women indicated they were self censoring by keeping low profiles from ultra nationalist groups This experience is common in Myanmar where women are routinely harassed by pro military groups and ultra nationalist groups like MaBaTha MaBaTha is an organization notorious for spreading anti muslim sentiment across the country Many of the women who counter hate speech on Facebook are monitored by MaBaTha and the pro military groups In turn women have been harassed by having their Facebook pages flooded with comments or their Messenger app inundated with inappropriate pictures