4/5/22, 3:23 PM Hate speech, atrocities and fake news: the crisis in Myanmar | Financial Times Some of the misinformation appears calculated to create chaos. Last year, a few days before the anniversary of the September 11 attacks and less than two weeks after ARSA’s attacks in Rakhine, twin chain messages were widely distributed via Facebook Messenger. One claimed that Muslims were preparing to launch “jihad” in the country on the 9/11 anniversary; another, sent to Muslims, said that the Buddhist extremist group was preparing to attack kalars — a racial slur for darkskinned people of south Asian descent. In response, mobs attacked Muslim houses, shopfronts and a mosque in the towns of Magway and Taungdwingyi, before being dispersed by riot police. Nickey Diamond has been subjected to online harassment and numerous threats to his life. After he appeared in a debate alongside the AP’s Htusan, in which he criticised the military for limiting media access to Rakhine, his landlord evicted him from his flat and he now lives behind a metal security gate. He has an infant daughter with his wife, who is a practising Christian registered as a Buddhist, but the couple have not legally married because they fear nationalists would torpedo the union under the 2015 law. He says two men, who he believes are state and military security functionaries, tail him wherever he goes, but he is determined to continue his work. “If we stop fighting, we will lose everything. We can’t stop what we are doing,” he says. “If we do, they won’t stop what they’re doing.” One morning I travelled to Sin Ma Kaw, one of a number of Myanmar villages that have proclaimed themselves “Muslim-free”. Deep in a rural area, it is a place with few opportunities outside farming. The townspeople received me politely, if a bit warily. They told me Muslims, Christians and Hindus were not allowed to settle, sleep or build their houses of worship there. “Everybody can visit but they cannot stay here,” said U Aye Swe, the village leader, as we drank tea beneath a Buddhist altar. “Muslim people cannot build their mosques; Christian people cannot build their churches.” According to the Burma Human Rights Network, there are about two dozen such villages across the country. “Muslim people do terrorism; we are very afraid of terrorism,” U Aye Swe said. “And if one of our people marries a Muslim, the attitudes of the Muslims transfer to Buddhist people. We don’t like it, and we don’t want it. The main reason is the faith.” In January, I interviewed Pe Myint, the information minister in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s sprawling new capital. The only address I was given — enough for the taxi driver — was Building Number Seven, a low-rise modernist block with Sovietreminiscent murals of Burmese pagodas, monuments and buildings. https://www.ft.com/content/2003d54e-169a-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 16/19