In an age of an abrupt new openness after decades of repression, the line between freedom of speech and human rights is blurred in Myanmar, injecting a dangerous volatility into even commonplace incidents.

“People cannot differentiate between freedom of speech and human rights. They think they can say what they like,” prominent monk Ashin Dhammapiya said at a conference on hate speech in Yangon last Friday.

The government is also mulling over how to cope with a flood of chatter, propaganda and hate speech on the Internet, in the midst of ongoing tension and violence fueled by Buddhist supremacist monks campaigning against Muslims.

Deputy Minister for Information Ye Htut, a former army officer, said at the conference that half of Myanmar’s approximately 800,000 Facebook accounts had been set up under fake names.

The phenomenon is a carry-over from decades in which anonymous rumors were the most potent force in an environment where there was little or no room for open expression and information.

“Small criminal cases (could turn into) religious riots when people turn to social media to put out wild rumors and accusations,” Ye Htut said at the one-day conference, organized by the U.S. Embassy, titled Preventing Hate Speech In Myanmar: Divergent Voices In A New Democracy.

Rejecting claims of political conspiracy behind the anti-Muslim violence that has rocked Myanmar and underlined the fragility of its latest experiment with democracy, he added: “As far as we know, this is happening naturally, not by those behind the scenes. People are spreading gunpowder on Facebook.”

The Internet’s penetration in the country of around 60 million is only 7 percent. But it is set to increase rapidly. This creates a problem in a culture in which many are not used to the Internet and accept whatever they read or see on it as fact.

Figuring out limits to freedom and navigating propaganda could spell the difference between a genuinely democratic and secular Myanmar, and a country where authoritarianism of the majority Burman Buddhists replaces military authoritarianism, analysts say.

In violence over the past year, more than 140,000 people ― mostly minority Muslim Rohingya ― have been driven from their homes in Rakhine state and now live precariously in flimsy camps. The majority Rakhine Buddhists also suffered, but the Rohingya bore the brunt: Well over 100 were killed, mostly in June and October last year, in some cases by clearly organized Rakhine mobs.

Subsequently in March, anti-Muslim violence that had apparently been organized killed dozens and drove thousands from their homes in central Myanmar.

The Internet and social media have been used by extremists to drum up suspicion, fear and hatred.

Buddhist supremacist monks have been campaigning against Muslims, and video recordings of their sermons are readily available on the Internet.

A storm of abuse and threats on the Internet has been directed at Time magazine for placing an image of the Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, well known for his inflammatory anti-Muslim campaigning, on its cover with the headline “The Face of Buddhist Terror.” The government has banned the issue.

At a separate conference last Thursday also in Yangon, attended by some 2,000 people, monks endorsed a call to ban Buddhist-Muslim marriages.

They said Buddhist women were being tricked into marrying Muslim men and forced to convert, and thus Islam was being spread and becoming a threat to Buddhism.

The monks distributed a 97-page booklet containing, among other things, a transcript of an interview with a Buddhist woman who was apparently tricked into marrying a Muslim man.

At last Friday’s conference, U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar Derek Mitchell said: “This country, for too long, has been at war with itself. For decades, the talk has been one of ‘enemies within.’ This attitude has been a major cause of this country’s underdevelopment.

“In many ways... the sense of fear and insecurity here is fundamental to what it is to be Myanmar… based as they are on concerns about geography, demographics, or ethnic and cultural differences.”

But when fear and insecurity dominated a society, Mitchell said, “it leads nowhere good, it is in fact dangerous.”

By Nirmal Ghosh

Nirmal Ghosh is a senior correspondent with The Straits Times. He is currently Indochina Bureau chief, based in Bangkok. ― Ed.

(Asia News Network)