“The military’s rampage against the Rohingya last year was without Aung San Suu Kyi’s apparent consent or prior knowledge. However, her response to international outrage has been defensive and — to most observers outside Myanmar — inadequate.”
“The Irrawaddy, a publication named after the country’s signature river, which has been a pillar of journalistic probity since the student activist Aung Zaw founded it in 1993.” It received “funding from donors including the National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.”
“But while the western press covered the violence widely, regular readers of The Irrawaddy’s English-language website noted some puzzling changes. The publication, which had previously been criticised by nationalists for its robust reporting on the persecuted minority, had started to label them as “self-identifying Rohingya”.”
“Rather than training its attention on what US and UN officials called ethnic cleansing, the publication focused on what it claimed was biased foreign news coverage of the exodus, and printed cartoons that tapped into a surge in nationalism and anti-Muslim sentiment.”
“many of the democratic forces that successfully challenged military rule in Myanmar are closing ranks around a nationalist and apologist script that increasingly puts them at odds with the western world. A uniquely unsettling moment in the country’s history is playing out in the press and social media, where new internet freedoms have enabled both incisive journalism and the spread of hate speech and false reports.”
Read more: Hate speech, atrocities and fake news: the crisis in Myanmar
2021-week29
