Washington based International Campaign for the Rohingya (ICR) in cooperation with NO BUSINESS WITH GENOCIDE sponsored a petition against the Facebook, to remove “Hate Speech” from its platform and to never lets its platform to be used again for campaigns of hate speech.
A report from Guardian (UK) states, in the months before the Burmese army’s offensive against the Rohingya in August 2017, posts on Facebook became “more organised and odious, and more militarized.” Posts on Facebook included fabricated stories stating that “mosques in Yangon are stockpiling weapons in an attempt to blow up various Buddhist pagodas and Shwedagon pagoda,”, the most sacred Buddhist site in Yangon. These fabricated hate speech devised by the Myanmar military and enabled them to carry on its genocide of the Rohingya and its war crimes against the Kachin, Shan, Karen, and other ethnic minorities in Myanmar.
The petition also asserts, earlier in August 2018, Facebook removed 18 accounts and 50 pages associated with the military, including the account of the army chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. But again in June 2020, Myanmar military has opened new propaganda accounts on Facebook, having no concern about the trial at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
This year in June, Gambia demanded Facebook to hand over the details of Myanmar military activities in Facebook’s platform, but on Tuesday Facebook has refused to release these posts. The United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar said that Facebook “substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict” in Myanmar.
To sign the petition please click below:
