It wasn’t the first time Ma Ba Tha had been able to influence a legal case so effectively. In October 2014, Htin Lin Oo, an information officer in the NLD, had given a speech in which he decried the fusion of violent nationalism and Buddhism. A video of the speech circulated on social media, and two months later he was arrested and charged with “outraging religious feelings.” He underwent a seven-month trial, and from time to time when he was taken from his cell to face the judge there would be monks outside the courthouse demanding the strongest sentence possible. That was eventually
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