The portrayal of the Rohingya genocide and refugee crisis in the age of post-truth politics

Abstract

The systematic persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas by Myanmar which resulted from populist hatred can be traced back to the Second World War when the Rohingyas sided with the British. Xenophobia has taken a permanent shape in the practice of power, the motive force behind the actions and reactions of successive Myanmar states and political elites. The colonial legacy has been used as the rationale for isolation and the use of violence against the Rohingyas. The socio-historical constructed and imposed identity throughout the colonial and post-colonial years has been used by the majority Buddhists to dehumanize the Rohingyas. The article argues that the historical identity creation and imposition by the majority Buddhists have facilitated the recent refugee crisis. The article aims to identify whether the tactics of post-truth politics have been used to fuel populist anti-Rohingya feelings among the majority Buddhists.

Full text

Research article
The portrayal of the Rohingya
genocide and refugee crisis in
the age of post-truth politics
Md. Ali Siddiquee
University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Abstract
The systematic persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas by Myanmar which resulted from
populist hatred can be traced back to the Second World War when the Rohingyas sided with the
British. Xenophobia has taken a permanent shape in the practice of power, the motive force behind
the actions and reactions of successive Myanmar states and political elites. The colonial legacy has
been used as the rationale for isolation and the use of violence against the Rohingyas. The socio-
historical constructed and imposed identity throughout the colonial and post-colonial years has
been used by the majority Buddhists to dehumanize the Rohingyas. The article argues that the
historical identity creation and imposition by the majority Buddhists have facilitated the recent
refugee crisis. The article aims to identify whether the tactics of post-truth politics have been used
to fuel populist anti-Rohingya feelings among the majority Buddhists.
Keywords
Bangladesh, Myanmar, post-truth politics, refugee, Rohingya
Introduction
The stateless Rohingyas have been facing systematic persecution and ethnic cleansing by the state
of Myanmar since the 1970s. The most recent spate of violence by the Myanmar military which
started in August 2017 has forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to leave their homeland and take
refuge in Bangladesh. This humanitarian disaster is not a new one and has a recurrent nature. One
of the prominent reasons of this crisis is the general prevalence of anti-Rohingya populist feeling
among the majority Buddhists. The populist hatred can be traced back to the Second World War
when the Rohingyas sided with the British. Burmese nationalism and xenophobia remain core tools
in Myanmar’s foreign policy. Xenophobia has taken a permanent shape in the practice of power,
the motive force behind the actions and reactions of successive Myanmar states and political elites.
Corresponding author:
Md. Ali Siddiquee, Lecturer, Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, 1000, Bangladesh.
Emails: ali.ir.du@gmail.com; ali.ir@du.ac.bd
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2020, Vol. 5(2) 89–103
ªThe Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/2057891119864454
journals.sagepub.com/home/acp

Anti-Rohingya feeling is nothing new; it has a historical background. Myanmar has a troubled past
with its Rohingya people. “The legacy of the colonial era has been used as the rationale for
isolation and the use of violence” in Myanmar (Gravers, 1999: 2). Zaman (2018) argues that the
identity construction of the Rohingyas of Myanmar is centred around the ideas of “Lumyo” or race,
and “Kala” or “Kalar”, popular colloquial terms used by the majority Buddhists to denote black
persons of Indian origin.
This socio-historical constructed and imposed identity throughout the colonial and post-colonial
years has been used by the majority Buddhists to dehumanize the Rohingyas. The article argues
that the historical identity creation and imposition by the majority Buddhists have facilitated the
recent refuges crisis. The recent systematic and social treatment of the Rohingyas has been carried
out through the tactics of post-truth politics.
The objective of the article is to identify whether the tactics of post-truth politics have been used
recently to fuel populist anti-Rohingya feelings among the majority Buddhists who spearheaded this
crisis. To meet this end, itis essential to shed light on ‘post-truth politics’ briefly to understand how the
media environment of Myanmar has facilitated the politico-religious and state elites to use the tactics
of post-truth politics to create the most recent Rohingya refugee crisis in a more devastating manner.
Conceptualizing post-truth politics
As Young (2016) has stated, the term “post-truth” has become a cliche in Media-International
Relations (Media-IR) discourse. Martin (2017) identifies that we often read academicians saying
that we are ostensibly living in a “post-truth” society largely due to the impact of changes in the
news milieu in the digital age. Conceptualizing this term remains difficult to many, particularly
those who are not avid followers of the recent changes in Media-IR discourse. In order to under-
stand post-truth politics in easier terms, we may hypothesize a few characteristics.
The term “post-truth” requires elucidation to understand whether the Burmese state and society
have used its tactics to foment anti-Rohingya populist hatred among the majority Buddhists. The
word has received wide attention since 2016. The Oxford Dictionary of English (2016) selected
“post-truth” as its word of the year in 2016. The adjective denotes, as defined by the Oxford
English Dictionary (2016), “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less
influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.
Post-truth politics is a comparatively new concept in Media-IR discourse. Even though it is a
relatively new theoretical construct, it has historical roots, having close connections with right-
wing populist discourses. The concept received wider attention from academia in the first decade
of the 21st century, but it found its place in Media-IR discourse in the mid-2010s. Brexit and the
US presidential election of 2016 are the best-known relevant examples of post-truth politics as
postulated by scholars (Rose, 2017: 44).
A systematic, well-defined, concrete theoretical shape of this concept is yet to take form.
However, the concept deserves attention, particularly in the face of the global rise of right-wing
populist political leaders and related political discourses. The five principal characteristics of post-
truth politics as a theoretical concept are as follows.
Lies as the order of the day
Post-truth refers to absolute lies being propagated across a society in a constant manner by
politicians. It endows these politicians with an almost exclusive right so that they can lie without
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facing condemnation. Interestingly, as Higgins (2016) noted, this is qualitatively different from the
cliche that politicians habitually lie and make false promises which they often have no intention of
keeping. In the post-truth political society, this exception no longer exists.
The wilful act of denials/spreading lies/misinformation/deceit/ignorance
The act of propagating constant lies is done consciously. The wilful act of spreading misinforma-
tion, deceit or ignorance is, of course, not a new phenomenon. Apart from Brexit and Donald
Trump’s ascendency to power, there are many contemporary examples of this wilful act of lying,
such as denying climate change, AIDS and so on (Kenyon, 2016). Now, the Internet is helping
these people’s wilful acts of spreading lies, as it is an open field and everyone can be their own
expert. In short, people are producers and at the same time consumers of their own produced
knowledge. This “makes them prey for powerful interests wishing to deliberately spread ignor-
ance” (Kenyon, 2016). The wilful act of conscious deliberation remains a central attribute in post-
truth politics.
Appeal to emotions and personal beliefs rather than established facts
Apart from wilful blindness to evidence, Laybats and Tredinnick (2016) note that post-truth
political discourse is characterized by “appeal to emotionally based arguments” which are “often
rooted in fears or anxieties” that reflect the real concerns and lived experiences of citizens. The
discourse is richly ambiguous and uses expressions of unclear meanings. Emotional resonance is
also evident in post-truth political messages in which common human fears and aspirations are
used (Romano, 2017). Post-truth arguments furthermore commonly include statistics, historical
information and other forms of provable “evidence”, but apply them through distorting the con-
texts or meanings.
Populist politicians in the post-truth era reach out to emotions and personal beliefs. Their
messages spread like wildfire through social media, which offer a swift way to render one-sided
information or opinions, characterized by the absence of options to crosscheck their validity, as
opposed to the mainstream media, which aim at presenting and contrasting opposing opinions.
Constant repetition of core motifs
The post-truth political discourse frequently relies on continuous repetition of core motifs, such as
Donald Trump’s election campaign slogan “Make America great again” or the 2016 Brexit cam-
paign’s “Vote leave” catchphrase. Populist motifs are frequently propagated in the post-truth era
and make their way into the popular consciousness. Eventually, Romano (2017) further argues, the
motifs, popularized by post-truth politicians, become media agenda as real social phenomenon.
Criminalization and vilification of a community
Populist fears and hatred fuse together in post-truth politics in order to criminalize and vilify a
particular community within a society. This remains a central feature of post-truth politics. For
example, when supporters of both Donald Trump and Brexit were “actively encouraged to not only
fear and hate immigrants and refugees for taking their jobs and burdening their infrastructure, but
to distrust and reject ‘the establishment’ too” (Pike, 2016). According to Wodak (2015: 2):
Siddiquee 91

...right-wing populism does not only relate to the form of rhetoric but to its specific contents: such
parties successfully construct fear and—related to the various real or imagined dangers—propose
scapegoats that are blamed for threatening or actually damaging our societies, in Europe and beyond.
Wodak’s words are strikingly relevant to the Rohingya crisis as well. Myanmar’s religio-
political elites’ repeated denials of the word “Rohingya”, indiscriminate blaming of century-old
inhabitants as “illegal migrants” or simply terming them “Bengalis”, their fear and unacceptability
of the Rohingyas in Rakhine and eventually what led to the Tatmadaws’ ethnic cleansing/genocide
and post-genocide denial etc. all require critical decrypting. Applying the concept of post-truth,
which is yet to take a concrete theoretical shape, may be useful to understand the issues mentioned.
Reflections on the media environment in Myanmar
It is essential to examine the media environment in Myanmar to understand why politico-religious
leaders and state officials have been able to use the tactics of post-truth politics so easily to foment
the recent refugee crisis. The media of Myanmar has experienced censorship and harsh regulations
since the 1962 coup. Conditions began to improve in 2011 when Myanmar attempted its transition
from military dictatorship to electoral democracy.
The state authority exerts tight control over media institutions by applying strict defamation
laws. Apart from the fear of prosecution by such laws, media professionals receive threats on a
regular basis and are often subject to physical violence. Such is the case when media professionals
carry out investigative reports that are critical of the government or the military, and on the status
and maltreatment of the Rohingyas. A sense of self-censorship exists, and due to this fear, media
workers are indirectly prohibited from working freely. Freedom House (2017) has stated that “the
media [of Myanmar] are deeply polarised along political lines and independent outlets struggle for
financial stability”.
In this context, the defamation laws prohibit journalists from making critical remarks about the
military, the President or NLD leader Suu Kyi. The state authorities strictly monitor the reports on
“military activity in Rakhine State, where the armed forces have been accused of severe mistreat-
ment of the Rohingya population” (Freedom House, 2017). According to Freedom House (2017),
Myanmar is rated as “Partly Free” in its overall Freedom in the World scores, and “Not Free” in
terms of Freedom of the Press and Freedom on the Net categories. Reporters Without Borders
(GXpress, 2017) has reported that “60 per cent of the 65 journalists who were killed during 2017
were deliberately targeted in order to silence them”.
At a micro level, state officials exert pressure directly to change editorial policies and to fire
reporters from jobs. For instance, Freedom House (2017) data indicated that a journalist was fired
after reporting on the alleged human rights abuses by security forces against Rohingyas. Though
the NLD-led government repealed the state of emergency law and granted amnesty to journalists
jailed under the previous government, media freedom is not a top priority in Myanmar. The
Myanmar government drafted and released a Right to Information Law on 27 December 2017,
which is yet to be implemented. The few private TV channels lack formidable competition, and are
under strict government censorship, like the press industry.
Free Expression Myanmar (FEM) organized a day-long conference on 30 March 2018 to
discuss media freedom and conflict. It was discussed how media persons and media houses face
many threats while covering conflicts in Myanmar, such as persecution, attacks, attempts to
deprive the media of income, blacklisting and denial of access to conflict areas (FEM, 2018a).
92 Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 5(2)

The conference also identified that Myanmar’s population has experienced misinformation,
disinformation, propaganda, intolerance and hate speech due to the media’s curtailing of freedom.
It was also identified that “fake news” and “hate speech” are the result of a lack of trustworthy
information. FEM (2018b) also pointed out that the right to truth is under threat in Myanmar for
three reasons: denial of access to information from the state; spreading of misinformation, propa-
ganda and disinformation by the governmental authorities with the intention of building public
support for their aims; and a lack of media diversity.
Recently, two Reuters journalists were arrested while collecting information and reporting on
the Rakhine State, where the Tatmadaw carried out a campaign of rape, killing and arson that has
sent more than 655,000 Rohingyas fleeing into Bangladesh. The UN Secretary General, Anto´nio
Guterres, has said the arrests were reflective of eroding freedoms generally in the country
(McKirdy, 2017). It would not be an overgeneralization to say that the Burmese media exist in
a miserable environment. Having said this, I move to the next part of my article, which explores
whether the tactics of post-truth politics to create a crisis are used in Myanmar, and argue that the
media environment in Myanmar is partly responsible for the crisis.
Reflections on the application of post-truth politics in Myanmar
This section asks in the following subsections whether the conceptual framework on post-truth
politics advanced earlier can explain the recent violence against the Rohingyas.
The extent of lying and denials
The narrative surrounding the Rohingyas crafted by the majority Buddhists is essential to under-
stand the extent of lying. Lies take many forms with regard to this crisis. One could identify the
characteristics from reports, briefs, articles, editorials, statements, comments etc. appearing in
state-controlled and private media long before 2016, and they resurface particularly after August
2016 as the recent crisis unravelled.
For a long time, the state authority and government-controlled media have denied the ethnic
identity of the Rohingyas (Albert and Chatzky, 2018). The private media and general public have
followed the official narrative to portray the Rohingyas as “immigrants”, “Bengalis” and/or “illegal
Bengali immigrants”. If one looks closely at the headlines and news reports from the Global New
Light of Myanmar since August 2017, one finds that they use terms other than “Rohingya” in
reference to them. This media outlet simply reproduced the government narrative while reporting
the crisis in Rakhine, which is biased and oversimplifies the complexity of the crisis.
The Myanmar government had ordered the state-run media not to refer to the persecuted Muslim
minority group that lives in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State by the divisive term “Rohingya”
during a visit by United Nations human rights officials (Radio Free Asia, 2016b). The Ministry of
Information even issued a letter in this regard on 16 June 2016, and instructed official and private
news outlets to describe the Rohingya who live in Rakhine as the “Muslim community in Rakhine
state” (Radio Free Asia, 2016b). The state authorities are clearly denying Rohingya as an ethnic
group, and hence it becomes easier for them to justify the treatment of this group.
Apart from denying their ethnic identity, the state authority and government-controlled media,
particularly the Global New Light of Myanmar (2018; GNLM), has wilfully generalized the
Rohingyas in some cases as “Islamist extremists” and/or have made links between the Rohingyas
with the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) Islamist extremists. Statistics and facts are
Siddiquee 93

cooked up by the government-controlled media, as evident in the reports of GNLM (2018), to draw
this connection. The politically-driven alleged “family ties” motif disregards many other factors,
for instance the religious differences between the Rohingya Muslims and Hindus.
Denials, one fundamental characteristic of post-truth politics, may take many other forms, as
evident in reporting in the Burmese state and private media. For instance, denoting the Rohingyas
as “pests”, “dogs” or other animals is one manifestation of dehumanizing them and denying their
rights as Myanmar’s own people (Stecklow, 2018).
Even though these people have lived in Arakan for more than a century, the Burmese state-
controlled and private media portray them as Bengalis or illegal immigrants (Totiyapungprasert,
2017), and exulted when they were forced to cross the border and flee en masse, leaving their
homes and belongings in Myanmar. This form of denial also helped justifying the ill treatment of
the Rohingyas by the Burmese military. Even Aung San Suu Kyi has denied that attacks on
Muslims in Myanmar amount to ethnic cleansing (BBC, 2017).
A European Union Foreign Affairs Council meeting, triggered by 102 MPs of the House of
Commons led by MP Rushanara Ali submitting a letter to British Secretary of State Boris Johnson,
demanding he exert more pressure on the Tatmadaw leaders on the Rakhine issue, concluded with
a promise to “discuss the issue at the European Union Foreign Affairs Council meeting” (Burma
Campaign UK, 2018). The Myanmar state media prefers not to use the word Rohingya, as is
evident from a reactionary report, after the submission of the letter, printed by GNLM (2018):
The report continuously uses the term “Rohingya” which is totally unacceptable for all the people of
Myanmar. The accusations made in the report are the same old ones that have been made since the start
of the Rakhine issue. Press meets and the press releases of the government have already declared that
the said accusations are wrong and the Tatmadaw True News Information Team has released for ten
times the true situation of Rakhine issue.
It is to be noted that the press release published in the GNLM (2018), signed by “Tatmadaw
True News Information Team”, including the phrase “ten times the true situation of Rakhine
issue”, is Orwellian in nature.
The news that appeared on GNLM as a reaction to the European Union Foreign Affairs
Council’s meeting, riddled with numbers and statistics, is a detailed monotonous blaming of the
ARSA by the Burmese state media. The report (GNLM, 2018) generalizes all Rohingyas as ARSA
members, and states that it is ARSA members who have “committed genocide and ethnic cleansing
on a minority of ethnic people in Buthidaung-Maungtaw region”. The report goes on to say that
ARSA members instructed those “living at refugee camps of the other country” to accuse “the
Myanmar Tatmadaw of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing when foreign diplomats and
journalists made visits there [Bangladesh]”.
The next paragraph of the report (GNLM, 2018) states that the Tatmadaw acted in line with
existing military and civilian laws during the recent Rakhine crisis. And interestingly, it states
that an “investigation team” was formed to check whether security troops had committed
crimes. Action was taken against those security forces who committed such crimes in accord
with the existing laws, the news report states. Now—and this is contradictory—the report at one
point accuses all Rohingyas of being ARSA members, but later points towards some Tatmadaw
forces being responsible for crimes and that action was taken against them in accordance with
existing laws.
94 Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 5(2)

The Burmese state-controlled and private media oversimplifies the complex scenario, as the
report by GNLM (2018) mentions that “after 5 September 2017 there were no more clashes” and
that those who left Myanmar are close aides of the ARSA. However, in fact more Rohingyas fled
into Bangladesh after that and the Burmese media simply denied this fact. The report in GNLM
(2018) says that “they fled for fear of investigation and legal action or due to the persuasion that
they would have the chance to go to third country”.
This is just one report. It clearly shows that the wilful, repetitive acts of denial and spreading
misinformation in the name of sharing “true information” have essentially linked the crisis to post-
truth politics. Since the crisis restarted, ruling elites and government officials of Myanmar have
been producing such content, which deny the ethnic identity of the Rohingyas, in both traditional
and social media. Acts of denial remain central in reinvigorating the crisis. In this crisis, these acts
have taken many forms. Denying the term Rohingya remains the central strategy of the ruling
Burmese politico-religious elites in denying the very real existence of one of the many ethnic
communities of Myanmar.
The wilful act of spreading lies/misinformation/deceit/ignorance
The constant and wilful acts of lying and spreading misinformation, deceit, misinterpretation and
ignorance by the politico-religious leaders and state officials of Myanmar take many forms. Firstly,
the very word “Rohingya” is replaced with other words to deny their ethnic identity and thus their
rights as citizens of Myanmar. State officials, politico-religious leaders and the general public have
converged in accepting the words “Rakhine Muslims” instead of the “Rohingya” to craft the
official and unofficial narratives. These narratives, where denial of their ethnicity remains a central
part, plays a crucial role in vilifying and criminalizing the Rohingyas.
It is evident from content analysis of news reports and editorials from the last two years, and
particularly those printed since late August 2017, that the state has been trying to remove the term
Rohingya from everyday use. One may find striking Orwellian resemblances here, where the
natural course of history is distorted, rewritten and presented in a totally different way. Wiping
out the term from everyday language or just not accepting the word exemplifies the common
human fears and aspirations of post-truth discourse, which are rampantly visible in the contents
produced by the Burmese traditional and social media. This is an act wilfully committed by the
politico-religious elites of Myanmar.
In post-truth politics, one leader may cook up facts for his/her own satisfaction and wish away the
real facts. This has been the case with the Myanmar authority; their fear of the word “Rohingya” and
the ways they are trying to censor it clearly depicts their wish that the word did not exist.
Appeal to emotions and personal beliefs rather than established facts
But it is not only the word they wish did not exist; to get rid of this entire community, politico-
religious leaders have resorted to emotions, personal beliefs, religious sentiments and ethnic
hatred. It is evident from the words and activities of politico-religious leaders since, and from
before, the crisis unravelled. A full-fledged racist movement has grown out of the politico-
religious leaders’ anti-Rohingya narratives. The movement further provided justifications for the
ethnic cleansing committed by the security and state officials over the years. To put that in context,
the Theravada Buddhists’ ultranationalist movement, the “969 Movement”, needs to be taken into
consideration. Davis (2015: 25) has mentioned in this regard:
Siddiquee 95

...Ma Ba Tha and Wirathu play central roles in inciting hatred against Muslims, advocating discri-
minatory laws, and promoting an exclusive ideology of Burman-Buddhist identity. As noted in the first
of Levinger’s steps, this marginalisation of ethnic minority groups is a key factor in dividing society
and driving conflict ...
The proponents and followers of the reactionary and ultranationalist 969 Movement were given
momentum by Theravada Buddhists. They believe that Muslims living in the Buddhist-majority
Myanmar are followers of an expansionist religion and they are conspiring to conquer Myanmar in
the 21st century (Bookbinder, 2013).
This reactionary movement is based on the premise that Muslims in Myanmar use “786” as an
expression of the phrase “Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim” in Arabic, which is also the opening
phrase of Al-Quran, meaning “In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful”. The
followers of the 969 Movement note that 7 þ8þ6¼21, and hence the conspiracy plot is
associated with the 21st century. In the Indian Subcontinent, Muslims use the number 786 on
business displays, at the entrance of houses, on religious papers, wills, seminaries etc. as a short or
numeric form (Abjad) of the phrase “In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful”
(Bookbinder, 2013).
The number the followers of Theravada Buddhism use, in response to Muslims’ 786, is 969. The
number 969 is visible everywhere in Myanmar nowadays: on taxis, shops, restaurants, carts,
workshops, monasteries etc. The proponents and followers of the 969 Movement like to associate
the usage of the number formally with a return to Buddhist heritage and the teachings of the
Buddha. The world has criticized the 969 Movement as an expression of religious hatred and
extremist indoctrination.
This deep-rooted anti-Muslim hatred has been implanted in Buddhist minds through 50 years of
military propaganda and by leaders like Ashin Wirathu, who popularized the movement. “If
Myanmar wants to live in peace, Buddhists and Muslims have to live separately”, Wirathu once
told the Diplomat (2013). He is often called the “Buddhist Bin Laden” for his inflammatory posts
on social media about Muslims, and regarded as the movement’s highest protector (MacGregor,
2013). Wirathu often equates Rohingya Muslims with mad dogs, and posts photos of dead bodies
which he claims are Buddhists killed by Muslims (Hookway, 2017).
The bulk of anti-Rohingya narrative on social media platforms follows the preaching of Wir-
athu, who turned to Facebook after he was banned from public preaching for a year (Fink, 2018).
At times, it has been difficult for even the Myanmar government to tolerate his racist preaching
which further complicates the Rohingya crisis. The State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee is a
government-appointed body of high-ranking Buddhist monks that oversees and regulates the
Sanghas in Burma. This body prohibited use of the “969” emblem for political purposes. After
the ban, the followers of the 969 Movement reorganized themselves under a newly-erected plat-
form, Ma Ba Tha (Patriotic Association of Myanmar). However, the anti-Rohingya sentiments the
movement has instilled in Buddhist minds is not going to be undone for some considerable decades
in the best case, and never in the worst case scenario.
Constant repetition of core motifs
The repeated denial of the Rohingyas’ ethnic identity and rights, the expression of popular hatred,
comparing them with animals and using expletives have been another area of this crisis that is
essentially linked to the symptoms of post-truth politics.
96 Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 5(2)

It is not only the religious elites of Burma who have strong reservations against the Rohingya
ethnic minority. Political leaders in Burma have also time and again expressed their anti-Rohingya
sentiments. For instance, The Arakan National Party (ANP)—a political party in the Rakhine
State—has issued a statement saying it rejects the mandated usage of the phrase of “Muslim
community in Rakhine” and will continue using “Bengalis” for Muslims in the Rakhine State,
even though the government’s order also forbids the use of this term (Radio Free Asia, 2016b).
The ANP’s statement also stated that the new government issued the order because it wants to
portray the Rakhine State as the home of Muslim minorities. “We released this statement because
the government asked media to use the phrase ‘Muslim community in Rakhine state,’ while
Muslims are being given the national verification cards,” said ANP vice chair Aye Nu Sein, in
a reference to cards that let holders apply for full Myanmar citizenship after a verification process
(Radio Free Asia, 2016a). “We feel that the government is giving favorable treatment to Muslims
so they can easily become citizens”, she said. “All Rakhine people are unhappy about this” (Radio
Free Asia, 2016a).
However, this is a false promise to the Rohingyas about the citizenship, since the state author-
ities have systematically barred them from claiming citizenship status. The government order
giving them citizenship is nothing but a facade. The earlier constitutions (1947, 1974) and Citizen-
ship Law of 1982 did provide citizenship to the Rohingyas, but the 2008 constitution stripped them
of this (Parashar and Alam, 2019). A Rohingya must prove that both their parents are nationals of
the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. This remains impossible and impractical for the Rohin-
gyas, “as the majority of parents of the Rohingyas do not hold any document to show that they are
nationals of the Republic” (Parashar and Alam, 2019: 102). This is one way of ostracizing the
Rohingyas from their rightful claim as citizens. The systematic denial of citizenship rights, making
them stateless, remains a core symptom of post-truth politics.
To further deprive their moral claim to citizenship, the state-controlled newspaper, the Global
New Light of Myanmar, has been using derogatory terms to portray the Rohingyas in a bad light. In
one op-ed, published on 16 November 2016, Rohingyas were compared to human fleas (Winn,
2016). The op-ed, by Maung Oo (2016), Chief Minister of Kayah State from the Union Solidarity
and Development Party of Myanmar, dehumanizes the Rohingyas as that “morally bad” group of
people, “loathe for their stench and for sucking our blood”, and argues that the nation’s citizenry
must “constantly be wary of the dangers of detestable human fleas”. One may find astonishing
resemblances to Nazism here.
“Sure, the Jew is also a human being”, wrote Joseph Goebbels, the future Nazi regime’s
propaganda chief, in the late 1920s. “None of us has ever doubted that. But a flea is also an
animal—albeit an unpleasant one ...our duty is to make it harmless” (Winn, 2016). Such
opinions are evident in Burmese state-run media and social media. Those motifs are readily
available, particularly on online forums, Facebook, YouTube and other popular social media
platforms: “Rohingya are referred to as dogs, thieves, terrorists and various expletives”
(Fuller, 2012). Commenters on these posts urge the government to “make them disappear”
and are very unhappy that Western countries and the United Nations are highlighting their
plight (Fuller, 2012).
Criminalization and vilification of a community
The constant lies about the Rohingyas, fabrication of their family ties with the ARSA and strong
reactions against the global media’s use of the word Rohingya are not peculiar to the
Siddiquee 97

ultranationalist Buddhists, the Global New Light of Myanmar and social media platforms. Such
deliberate efforts to criminalize and vilify a particular community are an important characteristic
of post-truth politics.
Over the years, state officials in Myanmar have termed the Rohingyas “ugly as ogres” and, more
recently, too “dirty” for soldiers to rape. Some political activists have gone even further, publicly
advocating Nazi-like pogroms and “inhuman acts” to get rid of the Rohingyas from Myanmar
(Winn, 2016).
The ways Rohingya people are portrayed in Burmese media are in striking resemblance with the
symptoms of post-truth politics. They are criminalized and vilified by the ruling political elites,
religious elites, majority Buddhists and military/government officials in order to achieve parochial
gains. Constant lies and generalizations about them are wilfully and rampantly expressed in the
media. The reports appearing in Burmese media regarding this crisis are oversimplified accounts,
which lack criticality and are right-wing and populist in nature. The words of Wodak (2015: 2) are
relevant in understanding this:
...right-wing populist parties across Europe and beyond draw on and combine different political
imaginaries and different traditions, evoke (and construct) different nationalist pasts in the form of
identity narratives, and emphasise a range of different issues in everyday politics: some parties gain
support via flaunting an ambivalent relationship with fascist and Nazi pasts (e.g. in Austria, Hungary,
Italy, Romania and France); some parties, in contrast, focus primarily on a perceived threat from
Islam (e.g. in the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland); some parties restrict
their propaganda to a perceived danger to their national identities from ethnic minorities and
migrants (e.g. in Hungary, Greece, Italy and the UK); and some parties primarily endorse a tradi-
tional Christian (fundamentalist) conservative reactionary agenda (e.g. in the US). In their free-for-
all rush for votes, most right-wing populist parties evidently pursue several such strategies at once,
depending on the specific audience and context; thus, the above-mentioned distinctions are primarily
of an analytic nature ...
To what extent are social media responsible?
This section discusses whether social media should be held responsible for the crisis and whether it
has links to post-truth politics. To a great extent, social media, particularly Facebook, has inad-
equate mechanisms to prevent users from fuelling such conflicts, and are therefore responsible.
Social media augmented the hate and fear of the majority Buddhists in the unravelling crisis.
Lee (2016: 202) argues that, “it is difficult to ignore the fact that Ashin Wirathu and the Ma Ba Tha
are quite obviously making successful use of Myanmar’s new media and political freedoms to
advance their agenda”. Fisher argued in this regard that:
groups such as the 969 Movement, the Association for the Protection of Race and Religion known as
the Ma Ba Tha and the political activist monk Ashin Wirathu have made ready use of Myanmar’s new
political and media freedoms to argue that it is in Myanmar’s national interest to protect the Buddhist
religion from a perceived Muslim threat, and they have called for restrictions on Muslims’ political and
civil freedoms. (Fisher, quoted in Lee, 2016: 196)
The followers of Therevada Buddhism and the 969 Movement turned to social media, partic-
ularly to Facebook, long before the 2017 mass exodus (South China Morning Post, 2017).
98 Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 5(2)

Myanmar military personnel were also responsible, since they turned the social network into a tool
for ethnic cleansing (Mozur, 2018). Their content was filled with hate, threats and propaganda,
created and supported by fake photos and fabricated stories. Those who have committed atrocities
against Rohingyas have used these as justification.
Nevertheless, the role of social media was hardly debated before the crisis was evident. After
the crisis, people started pointing to content on Facebook and other social media. For instance, very
recently the UN has stated that Facebook has had a “determining role in Myanmar” (Stecklow,
2018). Marzuki Darusman, chair of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on
Myanmar, is of the opinion that:
it has ...substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will,
within the public. Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation is
concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media. (Miles, 2018)
Yanghee Lee, a UN Special Rapporteur on the Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, opined that:
It [Facebook] was used to convey public messages but we know that the ultra-nationalist Buddhists
have their own Facebooks and are really inciting a lot of violence and a lot of hatred against the
Rohingya or other ethnic minorities ...I’m afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast, and not
what it originally intended. (Miles, 2018)
Before the crisis unravelled, in 2015, there were only two reviewers responsible for content
filtering employed by Facebook who knew the Burmese language. Before that, those who reviewed
content on allegations of violating the community standards of Facebook did not have any
knowledge of Burmese. Only after the crisis did Facebook start employing reviewers for Myan-
mar, but the number of reviewers is still not enough for the active 18,000,000 users in Myanmar,
as one Facebook employee told Reuters (Stecklow, 2018). Facebook’s automated content filter-
ing process could not translate the hate speech and distorted the context and meaning (Stecklow,
2018). The reviewing process is also often outsourced to companies which have no understand-
ing of the context and surprisingly very limited knowledge of the Burmese language (Stecklow,
2018). The content often gets lost in translation. However, little has improved, as a Reuters
report identified. Up until the second week of August 2018, more than 1000 posts, comments and
videos were available on Facebook against the Rohingyas and other Muslim communities of
Myanmar, most of which were in the Burmese Language. According to the Human Rights Center
of UC Berkley School of Law, some of these posts, videos and comments were older than six
years (Stecklow, 2018).
Digital researcher and analyst Raymond Serrato (Hogan and Safi, 2018) analysed 15,000 Face-
book posts from supporters of the Ma Ba Tha group. He identified that the number of posts had
increased since 1 July 2017, and had sharply increased since 1 August 2017, a few weeks before the
alleged ARSA attack in 2017. His findings also identified that “activity within the anti-Rohingya
group, which has 55,000 members, exploded with posts registering a 200%increase in inter-
actions” (Hogan and Safi, 2018). Figure 1 illustrates this increase in the number of Facebook posts
by Ma Ba Tha activists.
Serrato noted in this regard that:
Siddiquee 99

Facebook definitely helped certain elements of society to determine the narrative of the conflict in
Myanmar ...Although Facebook had been used in the past to spread hate speech and misinformation, it
took on greater potency after the attacks ...Right now, we have no way of knowing which people like
or share certain posts so we cannot track how disinformation or hate speech spreads on the platform.
(Hogan and Safi, 2018)
Another expert on hate speech in Myanmar, Alan Davis from the Institute for War and Peace
Reporting, identified that Facebook posts in the months before August were “more organised and
odious, and more militarised” (Hogan and Safi, 2018). His research team identified that made-up
stories were narrated from Facebook pages and supporters of Ma Ba Tha, such as, “mosques in
Yangon are stockpiling weapons in an attempt to blow up various Buddhist pagodas and Shwe-
dagon pagoda” (Hogan and Safi, 2018). The Guardian noted, “These pages also featured posts
calling Rohingya the derogatory term ‘kalars’ and ‘Bengali terrorists’. Signs denoting ‘Muslim-
free’ areas were shared more than 11,000 times” (Hogan and Safi, 2018).
Concluding remarks
Fear, hatred, emotions, personal beliefs, misinformation, lies etc.—that traits associated with post-
truth politics have prepared the actors of this crisis to unravel in Myanmar is evident from the
above analysis. The traditional media environment is partially responsible for this, along with the
availability of incessant hatred-filled contents on social media by the Burmese military and religio-
political activists, and the absence of social media’s mechanism to prevent this.
The anti-Rohingya discourse of the Burmese political elites highlights the imaginaries of
right-wing populist discourse, as identified by Wodak (2015: 2), in a direct or indirect fashion.
Analysts point out that the rise of right-wing populist movements and related political parties is
essentially linked with post-truth politics. Such a connection is also evident between the Bur-
mese politico-religious elites and military and their controlled national media, and uncontrolled
social media. Rohingya minorities have been vilified, criminalized and eventually driven out of
their natural ancestral homes through the application of post-truth politics. Wodak (2015: 2) has
further pointed out that:
Figure 1. The frequency of daily posts on Facebook from Ma Ba Tha supporters in Myanmar.
100 Asian Journal of Comparative Politics 5(2)

...all right-wing populist parties instrumentalise some kind of ethnic/religious/linguistic/political
minority as a scapegoat for most if not all current woes and subsequently construe the respective
group as dangerous and a threat “to us”, to “our” nation; this phenomenon manifests itself as a “politics
of fear”; all right-wing populist parties seem to endorse what can be recognised as the “arrogance of
ignorance”; appeals to common-sense and anti-intellectualism mark a return to premodernist or pre-
Enlightenment thinking ...the typical politics of denial that characterises much of right-wing populist
rhetoric – the specific ways in which media scandals are provoked and then dominate the agenda,
forcing all other important topics into the background. Indeed, instrumentalising the media, both
traditional and new, is part and parcel of the immediate success of such political movements.
With regard to the perplexed, fractious political situation in Myanmar, U Aung Naing Oo
(Fuller, 2012) mentioned that “the lid of authoritarianism has come off, and people finally have
the freedom to express themselves ...All these grievances have come out ...[and] the voices of
reason are on the sidelines for now”. This seems to be the reality with regard to this crisis.
Sismondo (2017) rightly pointed out, in this regard, that if the post-truth era starts by blowing up
current knowledge structures, then it isn’t very likely to lead to democratization, but in fact towards
authoritarianism. It is needless to say that this has been the case with Myanmar. In the case of
Myanmar, which states that it is on a path of democratization or transition, this remains an elusive
goal as the majority right-wing religio-political elites become increasingly reliant on post-truth
political tactics.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Md. Ali Siddiquee https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3908-3790
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