Telegram’s Role in the Ongoing Violence in Rakhine State

Since the 2021 military coup d’état and the period beforehand, Rakhine State has faced intense conflict fueled by a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya – an ethnic minority within the State. The Burmese junta also continues to oppress other ethnic groups across the country, but due to the Rohingya genocide, Rakhine State has come to the forefront of international attention and interest.

In Burma, nationalists and military supporters have exploited popular social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to foster tension and discrimination across ethnic, religious, political, and social lines, and have contributed to the ongoing violence in Rakhine State.

However, due to the junta’s imposed bans and restrictions on Facebook after the 2021 coup, the majority of the public migrated to the platform “Telegram,” and currently continue to simultaneously engage with both.

Facebook’s new censorship policies on content related to the Rohingya and other issues concerning Rakhine State have also restricted nationalists and military supporters from continuing to push harmful narratives on this platform. They have instead shifted to rely on another application – Telegram – as their primary platform to launch propaganda campaigns, spread disinformation and fake news intended to construe the facts,  and overall weaponize the use of information online. They have constructed and established a digital network of different profiles on various social media platforms for immediate and mass distribution of their content to society. Utilizing this network, the harmful narratives launched on Telegram are then scattered across other platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.

This report details the creation and distribution of Telegram content that seeks to escalate tensions and incite violence in Rakhine State, and identifies the users behind these efforts. It explores the construction of various narratives, the propagation of fake news and conspiracies, and includes a collection of key words and language examples used in these materials.

Key Words

Terms used by nationalists and military supporters to address different communities often promote ethnic and religious discrimination, featuring slurs, other derogatory terms, and comparisons of certain ethnic groups to wild animals.

They avoid the use of “Rohingya,” and instead employ key words historically found within genocidal propaganda that aim to erase the group’s existence in history. 

For example, the Rohingya are often referred to as “Bengali (‘ဘင်္ဂါလီများ)” and “လူမျိုးလိမ်အမည် (roughly translated to – ‘the fake ethnic name group’)” to push the narrative that they are from Bangladesh and deny them of their heritage in Burma. Derogatory terms such as “ဘင်များ” are also employed. In an effort to escape censorship policies, new terms were also created that could escape the monitoring algorithms of social media platforms, such as “Kmklများ” and  “Pင်ပြဲ အောင်.”

In addition, news of Rakhine towns and villages being attacked by airstrikes and heavy weaponry are referenced as the Rakhine people’s  “blood debts” finally being paid off, suggesting they deserved the violence.

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