Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 52 (2020) Crime as Cognitive Constraint members of the Government” 31 had fanned the flames of animosity through incendiary rhetoric. 32 At key political moments, the Myanmar government manufactured communal tension to distract the general public from pressing economic problems and/or justify the Tatmadaw’s reign. 33 The FFM identified many statements advocating for national, racial, or religious hatred constituting incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence prohibited under Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and which the FFM concluded may even constitute persecution in the context of crimes against humanity under article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute. 34 The Rohingya bear the brunt of the animosity, further entrenching their status as stateless persons and therefore, outsiders, in Myanmar.35 For instance, the Rohingya were commonly depicted as a foreigner 36 despite many of them having lived in Myanmar prior to British colonial rule. 37 Pejorative descriptions of Rohingya as “kalar,” “liar,” “Bengalis that sneaked in,” and “unwanted persons” manifested this bias.38 Religion, national identity, and existential threat were interwoven seamlessly, such that a threat to racial and religious purity constituted 31. Detailed Findings of the FFM, supra note 7, ¶ 696. 32. Id. ¶ 728 (noting the government’s portrayal of violence beginning in 2012 as “intercommunal” and attributed to a coordinated plan to “instigate violence and build tensions”). See also Wade, supra note 30. 33. Wade, supra note 30, at 34, 108–09. 34. Detailed Findings of the FFM, supra note 7, ¶¶ 696-748, 1319. 35. The Rohingya are not considered citizens under Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Act. See Citizenship and Human Rights in Myanmar: Why Law Reform is Urgent and Possible, INT’L COMM’N OF JURISTS (June 2019), https://www.icj.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MyanmarCitizenship-law-reform-Advocacy-Analysis-Brief-2019-ENG.pdf [https://perma.cc/U8NV-FZ7Q]; Tools of Genocide: National Verification Cards and the Denial of Citizenship of Rohingya Muslims in RIGHTS, at 44 (2019), Myanmar, FORTIFY https://www.fortifyrights.org/downloads/Tools%20of%20Genocide%20%20Fortify%20Rights%20-%20September-03-2019-EN.pdf [https://perma.cc/38EC-KNW8]. 36. Matt Schissler, Matthew J. Walton & Phyu Phyu Thi, Reconciling Contradictions: Buddhist-Muslim Violence, Narrative Making and Memory in Myanmar, 47 J. OF CONTEMP. ASIA, July 2017, at 376; Buddhism and State Power in Myanmar, INT’L CRISIS GROUP, at 7-9 (Sept. 5, 2017), https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/290-buddhismand-state-power-in-myanmar.pdf. 37. Detailed Findings of the FFM, supra note 7, ¶¶ 4724–4773; See Thant Myint-U, THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF BURMA: RACE, CAPITALISM, AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY IN THE 21ST CENTURY (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2020). 38. Detailed Findings of the FFM, supra note 7, ¶¶ 1312–1313. 151