Colonialists occupied the lower part of Myanmar” (Oo, Myanmar Politics and the Tatmadaw: Part 1, 2018). The military has used images like these to justify antiRohingya operations in Rakhine while maintaining that the institution as a whole was devoted to protecting Buddhism and the sovereignty of the state. The significance of this is that it is an example of the blatant ways in which the military “reinterprets” history to support a proliferation of stereotypes that support its totalitarian ideology. Surveillance and Control of Information. These tools have long been an important part of the Tatmadaw’s overall power command structure. In today’s global world, the military has to manipulate information that it does not have control over, namely, the international news media. Under a democracy, the military and central government had no choice but to lift some of the restrictive information laws preventing the populace from accessing media sources beyond those directly run by the Tatmadaw. This is where the veil of democracy becomes exceptionally important. In presenting Burma as a newly emerging democracy, the military effectively protected itself from international scrutiny of its continued human rights violations for years prior to the emergence of Facebook live streams that recorded the genocidal acts in Rakhine State. To prevent the international news media from accessing the realities of Rakhine State, the military imposed an internet blackout during the summer of 2019. As reported by New York Times writers H. Beech and S. Nang (2019), the internet blackout severed parts of Rakhine State from the rest of the world, especially the areas in Rakhine State that were plagued by guerrilla warfare between ARSA, the Arakan Army, and the Tatmadaw. This allowed the military’s ethnic cleansing operations to continue far away from the view of international scrutiny. The authors stated: 85