By 2012 this purported transition was fast tracked even further when the USDP announced that it was holding by-elections. This time the NLD contested and of the 44 seats it sought, it won 43. For the first time in Burmese history Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD were able to participate in the legislative branch of government. Soon thereafter the by-elections political engagement began to increase in Rakhine State. The Arakan National Party was formed when the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party and Arakan League for Democracy merged. Resentment toward Rohingya became a point of unification and solidarity among Buddhist Rakhines. In 2012, violent riots in Rakhine broke out as a result of sectarian tensions following the gang-rape and murder of a Rakhine Buddhist woman allegedly by a group of Rohingya men (International Crisis Group, “Buddhism and State Power in Myanmar”, 2017). As tensions grew, in June 2012, a group of Buddhist men attacked a bus carrying a group of nine Rohingya men who were later executed by the mob after having been mistakenly identified as the perpetrators of the rape/murder (Hla, 2012). A state of emergency was subsequently declared in Rakhine allowing the military to actively engage in and thereby exacerbate the conflict (Keane, 2012). By October 2012, widespread violence had erupted in predominantly Muslim villages. By the end of 2012 over 90,000 people were internally displaced or forced to flee to Bangladesh, an overwhelming majority being Rohingya (BCC, “Burma Profile,” 2012). The Rohingya were not the only Muslims who felt the increasing tensions. In March 2013, the Tatmadaw instigated riots in Meiktila, in the Mandalay district of central Burma, which resulted in the total destruction of an entire Muslim neighborhood. As I will discuss later, this riot was the root of the infamous Human Rights Watch satellite 19