On Incitement, Discrimination, and Potential International Criminal Liability Arising from Anti-Muslim and Anti-Rohingya Activities in Myanmar
Date: May 2026
Prepared for Public Circulation and Relevant Authorities
I. PURPOSE OF THIS MEMORANDUM
This memorandum serves as a formal legal warning and advisory to:
- Members and affiliates of Ma Ba Tha
- Administrative authorities at all levels (village, ward, township, district, and state/region governments)
- Operators of online platforms, including social media accounts, blogs, and digital networks engaged in political or military messaging
It highlights potential civil, criminal, and international legal consequences arising from acts of:
- Religious incitement
- Discrimination and persecution
- Arbitrary detention
- Targeting of minority communities, particularly Muslims and Rohingya
II. CONTEXT AND CURRENT RISK FACTORS
Myanmar remains under conditions of severe political instability following the 2021 Myanmar military coup led by Min Aung Hlaing.
Recent developments indicate:
- Heightened vulnerability of minority populations during periods of political diversion
- Historical patterns of communal violence triggered by organized narratives
- Increased online dissemination of anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya content
Reports of arrests of Rohingya individuals possessing valid documentation and restrictions on religious practices raise serious legal concerns under both domestic and international law.
III. APPLICABLE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK
The following legal instruments and principles are relevant:
1. Genocide Convention (1948)
Prohibits acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
2. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
Myanmar is not a full party; however, jurisdiction has been asserted in relation to cross-border crimes (e.g., deportation of Rohingya).
Relevant crimes include:
- Crimes against humanity (Article 7), including persecution and deportation
- Incitement to violence when linked to widespread or systematic attacks
3. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
Customary principles apply, including:
- Freedom of religion
- Protection from arbitrary detention
- Prohibition of hate speech inciting violence
4. Customary International Law
Even absent treaty ratification, Myanmar remains bound by:
- Prohibitions on genocide
- Prohibitions on crimes against humanity
IV. SPECIFIC LEGAL RISKS
A. Incitement to Hatred and Violence
Public speeches, sermons, or online posts targeting Muslims or Rohingya may constitute:
- Direct and public incitement to violence
- Evidence of intent in future prosecutions
B. Arbitrary Arrests and Detention
Detaining individuals based on identity or religion may amount to:
- Crimes against humanity (if systematic)
- Violations of due process rights
C. Religious Interference
Obstructing religious practices (including during Eid al-Adha) may constitute:
- Religious persecution
- Violations of fundamental freedoms
D. Digital Complicity
Operators of coordinated online campaigns may face:
- Liability for aiding and abetting
- Documentation and preservation of digital evidence for future prosecution
V. INDIVIDUAL CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY
International law does not recognize immunity for:
- Religious leaders
- Administrative officials
- Military personnel
- Civilian propagandists
Individuals may be held accountable under doctrines of:
- Command responsibility
- Joint criminal enterprise
- Aiding and abetting
VI. WARNING TO ALL RELEVANT ACTORS
All recipients of this memorandum are hereby placed on notice:
- Any participation in incitement, discrimination, or violence may be documented and used in international proceedings.
- Digital records are permanent and increasingly admissible as evidence.
- Future accountability mechanisms—including international courts and investigative bodies—are actively collecting information.
VII. RECOMMENDED IMMEDIATE ACTIONS
To avoid legal exposure, all parties are advised to:
- Cease dissemination of hate speech and inflammatory narratives
- Ensure protection of all religious communities without discrimination
- Release individuals detained without lawful basis
- Respect religious observances and places of worship
- Monitor and regulate online content to prevent incitement
VIII. CONCLUSION
Myanmar stands at a critical juncture. The repetition of past patterns of communal targeting will not only deepen internal divisions but also expose individuals and institutions to serious international criminal liability.
This memorandum serves as both a warning and an opportunity: to uphold the rule of law, prevent further harm, and avoid repeating actions that may be judged by history and law alike.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
- Reports on persecution of Muslims in Myanmar
- Documentation of activities of Ma Ba Tha
- Analyses of Islamophobia and communal violence in Myanmar
- Prior legal memoranda on Rohingya-related atrocities and accountability
- Legal Memorandum: Assessment of Ashin Wirathu’s Actions Under International Human Rights and Criminal Law
https://myanmarmuslim.news/en/2025/06/06/legal-memorandum-assessment-of-ashin-nyanissara-sitagu-sayadaws-role-under-international-human-rights-and-legal-norms/
Legal Memorandum for International and Domestic Human Rights Authorities of Unlawful Sealing and Dispossession of the Historic Guard Dan Masjid in Sagaing
Legal Memorandum on Atrocities Against Rohingya Civilians by Arakan Army (AA)
Legal Assessment of Sr. General Than Shwe’s Responsibility for Anti-Muslim Atrocities and Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar
Wirathu’s Hate Speech: Junta’s Old Weapon Against Muslims and Democracy
The Saint Who Sold Hate: Exposing Sitagu Sayadaw’s Role in Myanmar’s Genocide Machinery
“Behind the Riots: Questions of Hidden Hands in Myanmar’s Communal Violence”
Legal Memorandum: Examination of Economic Complicity in Myanmar’s Ethnic Violence
And Wikipedia articles about Persecution on Muslims in Myanmar, Ma Ba Tha, Islamophobia and Buddhist Terrorism, Wirathu etc
ဒေါပုံတွင် စစ်ရှောင်ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ၅၀ ခန့်ကို အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးနှင့်မဘသဘုန်းကြီးများက ဖမ်းဆီးပြီး ရဲစခန်းပို့
DVB
ရန်ကုန်တိုင်း ဒေါပုံမြို့နယ် နွယ်အေးရပ်ကွက်မှာ မေ ၂ ရက်နေ့ ညနေ ၅ နာရီက ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်က စစ်ရှောင်လာတဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ၅၀ နီးပါးကို ရပ်ကွက်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးနဲ့ မဘသ ဘုန်းကြီးတွေက ဖမ်းဆီးပြီး ရဲစခန်းကိုပို့ခဲ့တယ်လို့ မြို့ခံတွေဆီက သိရပါတယ်။
မနေ့ ညနေ ၅ နာရီ ဒေါပုံမြို့နယ် နွယ်အေးရပ်ကွက် နဂါးနီ ၂ လမ်း တိုက်အမှတ် ၄၇ နဲ့ ၄၈ မှာ ရောက်ရှိနေတဲ့ စစ်ရှောင်ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေကို ရပ်ကွက်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးအဖွဲ့ဝင် စစ်ဆေးပြီးနောက် မဘသဘုန်းကြီးတွေကို ခေါ်ကာ ရဲစခန်းကို ပို့ခဲ့တယ်လို့ ရပ်ကွက်နေသူတယောက်က DVB ကို ပြောပါတယ်။
“ရခိုင်ကနေ စစ်ရှောင်လာတဲ့ ကလေးတွေနေတဲ့တိုက်ကို အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးမှူးနဲ့ ရာအိမ်မှူး ဆယ်အိမ် မှူးတွေက ဝင်စစ်တယ်။ စစ်ဆေးနေရင်း မဘသ ဘုန်းကြီးတွေကို ဖုန်းဆက်ခေါ်တယ်။ မဘသ ဘုန်းကြီးတွေရောက်လာတော့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာတွေ ဘင်္ဂါလီတွေလို့ ပြောပြီး ရဲတွေပါ ထပ်ခေါ်ပြီး ဖမ်းသွားတာ။”
ဖမ်းဆီးခံရသူတွေကတော့ ဘူးသီးတောင် နဲ့ မောင်တောမြို့နယ်မှ စစ်ဘေးရှောင်လာတဲ့ လူငယ်တွေဖြစ်ပြီး အဆိုပါလူငယ်တွေကို စာသင်ပေးနေတဲ့ ဆရာတွေကိုပါ ဖမ်းခေါ်သွားတယ်လို့ အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးနဲ့နီးစပ်တဲ့သတင်းအရင်းအမြစ်က DVB ကို ပြောပါတယ်။
“ဘူးသီးတောင် မောင်တောက စစ်ရှောင်လာတာ။ လဝက အဖွဲ့က စစ်ဆေးတော့ သူတို့မှာ မှတ်ပုံတင်တွေပါတယ်။ ဒါကိုအုပ်ချုပ်ရေးက ခိုးဝင်ဘင်္ဂါလီတွေလို့ စွပ်စွဲပြီး မဘသ ဘုန်းကြီးတွေနဲ့ ပေါင်းပြီး ရဲစခန်းပို့တာ။”
မနေ့က အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးအဖွဲ့၊ မဘသဘုန်းကြီးတွေနဲ့ ရဲတွေဟာ စစ်ရှောင်လူငယ် ၄၀ နဲ့ ဆရာ ၁၀ ယောက် ည ၉ နာရီအထိ စစ်ဆေးမှုတွေလုပ်ခဲ့ပြီး ရဲစခန်းခေါ်သွားတာလို့ သတင်းအရင်းအမြစ်က ဆက်ပြောပါတယ်။
လတ်တလောမှာ ဒေါပုံမြို့မရဲစခန်းက ဖမ်းဆီးခံရသူ စစ်ရှောင်ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ၄၀ နဲ့ ဆရာ ၁၀ ယောက်
ကို ပြန်မလွှတ်ပေးသေးဘူးလို့ မြို့ခံတွေဆီက သိရပါတယ်။
Photo : DVB
