Myanmar’s Weaponization of COVID-19 to investigate previous waves of violence. To far, this includes EAOs and anyone deemed to this end, the government must also withdraw be their allies, as well as journalists and media their own repressive orders, including the in- organizations, which provided much of the ternet ban in Rakhine and Chin States, criminal information consolidated in this paper. If left charges against journalists, and the “terrorist” unchecked, human rights defenders and other label designated to EAOs. members of the resistance are likely to be tar- In a country plagued by decades of physical geted and persecuted by both the NLD admin- violence and institutionalized discrimination, istration’s repressive directives and the military COVID-19 interacts with and preys upon ex- measures that enforce them. The threats have isting patterns of oppression; it is unlikely to be been established; they must not continue un- controlled or defeated amid an escalating civil challenged by the international institutions and war. The virus has granted the Myanmar mili- actors that claim to support a democratic fu- tary an opportunity to silence those perceived ture for Myanmar and to stand in solidarity with to be a threat to its long-term hegemony. Thus the country’s most marginalized. 45