36 A NATION LEFT BEHIND offensives involved mass murders, rapes and but disguised as pages focused on news, en- gang rapes, and the systematic destruction tertainment or celebrities. These pages were of homes and villages resulting in more than taken down by Facebook in 2018, after the UN 700,000 Rohingya forcibly displace across the Fact-Finding Mission classified them as com- border from Rakhine State to Bangladesh. The prising “a carefully crafted hate campaign.”110 case is currently under investigation by ICC A New York Times report later described the and Myanmar stands to face the World Court online operation as one of “the first examples for its crimes committed against the Rohingya. of an authoritarian government using the social The anti-Rohingya hate speech was later linked network against its own people.”111 to accounts quietly controlled by the military Promoting an agenda Vitriol toward the ethnic resistance is the statement, which was originally published also unmistakable in official government on Facebook, accused the AA of “misusing” statements, which dedicate significant space the internet to promote its own agenda. There to categorizing EAOs as enemies of the state, was no mention of the Myanmar military’s and serve to warn anyone even remotely offensives, air strikes, or refusal to declare associated with them that they are a possible a ceasefire – even during the pandemic– target of repressive measures. Around half of demonstrating a total disregard for and the a nearly 900-word 10 April statement by the whitewashing of the root cause of conflict: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) – headed military-driven Bamar-Buddhist state-building by State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi – on project, which is now also an increasing threat “leaving no one behind” in pandemic relief in to public health for all people in Myanmar. Rakhine State was concentrated on reinforcing MoFA described the civil war in Rakhine the government’s label of the AA as a terrorist and Chin States as a context with “considerable organization and contextualizing the Myanmar challenges” to the delivery of humanitarian military as enduring “massive attacks” by the aid, stating that the country had “scaled up” its EAO.112 coordination with UN agencies, the World Food This MoFA update defended both the Programme and the International Committee government-imposed internet blackout in of the Red Cross to bring assistance to conflict- Rakhine State and the 23 March declaration affected communities. Yet the use of coded, of the AA as a terrorist organization. Ironically, non-committal language in such statements – 110 Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar. Report of the detailed findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar. UN Human Rights Council. 10 September 2018. P. 168. 111 Paul Mozer. “A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military.” The New York Times. 15 October 2018. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html 112 Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Myanmar leaves no one behind in its fight against COVID-19 in Rakhine State.” Global New Light of Myanmar. 11 April 2020 (Originally posted on 10 April 2020). Available at: https://www.globalnewlightofmyanmar.com/myanmar-leaves-no-one-behind-in-its-fight-against-covid-19-in-rakhine-state/