A WIDER CLIMATE OF FEAR AND HARASSMENT “These days, the authorities don’t physically target you, but there is general surveillance. If we hold an event SB [Special Branch] will come to ask what we are doing, take photos and collect information. They will ask for names of participants, record who comes in and goes out of the meeting place, how long they stay for. Sometimes they tell the local people ‘Don’t go in there, you might be in trouble if you go’.” A human rights defender tells Amnesty International about his experience of surveillance when undertaking human rights activities and trainings.81 In the past two years, the authorities in Myanmar have used politically-motivated arrest, detention and imprisonment in a way that appears to be aimed at weakening protest movements, harassing human rights defenders and peaceful activists and instilling fear among them. The authorities compound the fear of arrest with other forms of intimidation and repression. Forty-six human rights defenders and activists interviewed for this report told Amnesty International that they had been subjected to some form of surveillance or intimidation by the authorities, often by members of Special Branch police. The interviews conducted expose a pervasive system of monitoring, which include being followed; having their photo taken when attending events and meetings; midnight inspections of their offices and homes; and harassment of family members, colleagues or friends.82 Many human rights defenders and activists also expressed concerns that the authorities were monitoring their online activities, in particular via social media sites like Facebook, which has become extremely popular in Myanmar, and is used by many activists as a tool to communicate and share information. One activist told Amnesty International: “I posted my mobile number on the Facebook page of a workshop we were holding so people could contact me to register. Two days later an officer from SB called, asking me questions about the workshop, who was going and what it was about.”83 3.4 INFLUENCE OF NATIONALIST GROUPS A new disturbing trend under the Thein Sein government is the role of non-state actors, in particular Buddhist nationalist groups, in pushing for politically-motivated prosecutions. In recent years, there has been an alarming rise in religious intolerance. Following large-scale sectarian violence between the Buddhist and mostly Rohingya Muslim communities in Rakhine state in June 2012, sparked by the alleged rape and murder of a Buddhist Rakhine woman by Muslim men, tensions between Buddhist and Muslim communities have grown throughout Myanmar. In recent years religiously motivated attacks, predominantly against Muslims, have taken place in several towns across the country. 84 During these episodes of violence, houses were burnt, madrasas destroyed and people beaten, in some cases to death. In March 2013, an attack on Muslim students, teachers and residents in Meiktila, a town in Mandalay Region by Buddhist mobs resulted in 43 deaths and led to some 13,000 persons being displaced. 85 Religious intolerance has been fuelled by groups, such as the Ma Ba Tha (the Myanmar language acronym for The Association for the Protection of Race and Religion), which promote discriminatory ultranationalist agendas and have grown in power and influence. Sermons, leaflets, online social media messages and videos openly call for boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses, warn that Buddhist women need to be protected from Amnesty International interview, Yangon, June 2015. See Amnesty International, Going back to the old ways, p12. 83 Amnesty International interview, Yangon, June 2015. 84 See International Crisis Group, The dark side of transition: Violence against Muslims in Myanmar, Asia Report N°2511, October 2013. 85 See Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, 23 September 2013, UN Doc, A/68/397, para 59 and See Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Massacre in Central Burma: Muslim Students Terrorized and Killed in Meiktila May 2013. 81 82 NEW EXPRESSION MEETS OLD REPRESSION ENDING THE CYCLE OF POLITICAL ARRESTS AND IMPRISONMENT IN MYANMAR Amnesty International 29