The Buddhist-majority nation refuses to recognise Rohingya as citizens, referring to them instead as “Bengalis” and insisting they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

On Friday several dozen supporters cheered and scattered petals in front of Parmaukkha as he walked out of Yangon’s notorious Insein prison at dawn before going to pray at the city’s iconic Shwedagon Pagoda.

“He has work to do … I love everything he does for religion and the nation,” said Aye Lay, a 32-year-old supporter.

Anti-Muslim hate speech has been brewing in Myanmar for several years, often spilling over into bouts of bloodshed.

Religious hatred has surged in the wake of a military crackdown that has forced 700,000 Rohingya to flee the country since August.

The UN says the campaign amounts to ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide.

But many in the mainly Buddhist nation support the crackdown, which the army says was needed to crush a Rohingya militant uprising.

Over the past year, religious authorities have taken some steps to curb the influence of ultra-nationalist monks like Parmaukkha.

His release on Friday coincides with the end of a year-long public speaking ban on Wirathu – another firebrand monk known as the face of Myanmar’s Buddhist nationalist movement.

Wirathu, once dubbed the “Buddhist Bin Laden”, was barred from giving public sermons last year by a council of senior monks who said he had “repeatedly delivered hate speech against religions to cause communal strife”.

The monk was also recently kicked off Facebook, where he had amassed a huge following with incendiary anti-Muslim posts.

The social media giant said it took down his page in January in accordance with a policy that prohibits “people dedicated to promoting hatred and violence against others”.