8/12/22, 11:01 AM Intolerance, Islam and the Internet in Burma - New Mandala groups that have been accused of having connections with Al-Qaida. The Muslims communities are politically too immobilized to do the tasks anyway. This has an important implication on the relationship between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority. On the part of Rohingya activists, their insistence on the group being an official ethnic group of the country only sustains backlash from Rakhines and majority Burmese. They have not taken on the so-called ‘illegal’ immigration, making the majority Burmese to insist on immigrants and Burma-born Rohingya being the same. In short, the meddling of ethnicity, religion, ‘illegal’ immigration and citizenship has been left unaddressed. There are politicians, activists, and journalists from Muslim communities who are working within the mainstream. When the mainstream completely ignores them in times of need, the Muslims find themselves too paralyzed: they have no representatives to act on their behalf nor do they have their own leaders, organizations/parties, or media. Realizing that the mainstream political movement is only inattentive to their needs, Burmese Muslims started responding to the racist campaign after the April incidents. Some predicted that sectarian violence would break out soon if the media and mainstream political organizations did not control the racist campaign. Their cry for help, however, only falls on deaf ears: the media and human right activists assumed that the campaign on Facebook was not worth addressing. Yet, the campaign has already redefining political spaces, citizenship and inter-communal relations manifested in the 3 June 2012 massacre, which was a strong reaction to a rape-murder case of a 26-year-old woman in Rambre Township. Triggering public anger What actually triggered public anger? It may have been racial profiling by the ethnic Arakan news agency, Narinjara, established in 2005. When the rape incident took place, the agency published news identifying the accused with their Islamic faith. In its Burmese language news, the incident was presented as if Muslims [read aliens] were threatening local people, https://www.newmandala.org/intolerance-islam-and-the-internet-in-burma-today/ 8/11