Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 52 (2020) Crime as Cognitive Constraint a matter of national security. 39 Anti-Muslim narratives abroad, such as the US “war on terror,” were exploited to reinforce manufactured prejudices. 40 This fed the narrative that the Rohingya were a threat not only to Myanmar’s Bamar ethnic group, but also to the predominant Buddhist religion. 41 It affirmed the genuine fear felt by many that if the “Western Gate” of the country had not been protected against Muslim Bengals, then “Myanmar and the rest of Buddhist South East Asia would have been Muslim a long time ago.” 42 Myanmar’s democratization in 2011 from decades of military rule was a harbinger of a new era. For one, the law and practice of prepublication censorship were abolished. Prior to this, articles required “careful vetting by the censor board,” and those deemed a threat to national security were literally cut out from the publication. 43 The political transition was also marked by “open trade policies and privatization.” 44 The telecommunications industry was liberalized soon after. This, again, was groundbreaking. Before transition, “the Internet was only available to a select few, as it was prohibitively expensive.”45 39. Wade, supra note 30, at 195 (noting that the “nation had become so deeply entwined with the faith that one could not be distinguished from the other”); Jonathan Liljeblad, The Efficacy of National Human Rights Institutions Seen in Context: Lessons from the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission, 19 YALE HUM. RTS. & DEV. L. J. 95, 113 (2017) (describing the position of the Tatmadaw as a “defender of national unity and peace”). 40. Matt Schissler, On Islamophobes and Holocaust Deniers: Making Sense of Violence, in Myanmar and Elsewhere, CONFLICT IN MYANMAR: WAR, POLITICS, RELIGION 283, 292 (Nick Cheesman and Nicholas Farrelly, eds. 2016): (“...the use of global arguments about Muslims elsewhere is an important part of reinforcing a sense of general threat from Muslims at home. This is a parallel, but in Myanmar it also appears to be a productive interrelationship: the strand of argument about Islam in the world that is used to bolster a larger narrative of Muslim threat in Myanmar explicitly draws on discourses that have grown into global prominence as a part of the ‘War on Terror’”); Wade, supra note 30, at 83. 41. Detailed Findings of the FFM, supra note 7, ¶¶ 1314–1317; Wade, supra note 30, at 195-96. 42. Buddhism and State Power in Myanmar, supra note 36, at 7, 9. 43. Wade, supra note 30, at 102. 44. Susan Banki and Ja Seng Ing, Precarity and Risk in Myanmar’s Media: A Longitudinal Analaysis of Natural Disaster Coverage by The Irrawaddy, MYANMAR MEDIA IN TRANSITION: LEGACIES, CHALLENGES AND CHANGE 191 (Lisa Brooten, Jane Madlyn McElhone, Gayathry Venkiteswaran, eds., 2019); Amy Chua, The Paradox of Free Market Democracy, HARVARD INT’L L. J. 287, 293 (2000) (noting that the version of capitalism and the kind of democratic transition unfolding in many developing countries is not the same as what happened in the developed world). 45. Detailed Findings of the FFM, supra note 7, ¶ 1343 152