‘Facebook has now turned into a beast’, says United
Nations investigator, calling network a vehicle for ‘acrimony, dissension and
conflict’
File Photo of Yanghee Lee |
Facebook has been blamed by UN investigators for playing
a leading role in possible genocide in Myanmar by spreading hate speech.
Facebook had no immediate comment on the criticism on
Monday, although in the past the company has said that it was working to remove
hate speech in Myanmar and ban the people spreading it.
All these flashbacks come': Rohingya’s teens
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More than 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar’s
Rakhine state into Bangladesh since insurgent attacks sparked a security
crackdown last August. Many have provided harrowing testimonies of murders and
rapes by Myanmar security forces.
The UN human rights chief said last week he strongly
suspected acts of genocide had taken place. Myanmar’s national security adviser
demanded “clear evidence”.
Marzuki Darusman, Chairman of the UN Independent
International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, told reporters that social media
had played a “determining role” in Myanmar.
“It has … substantively contributed to the level of
acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public. Hate
speech is certainly of course a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation
is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media,” he said.
The UN Myanmar investigator Yanghee Lee said Facebook was
a huge part of public, civil and private life, and the government used it to disseminate
information to the public.
“Everything is done through Facebook in Myanmar,” she
told reporters, adding that Facebook had helped the impoverished country but
had also been used to spread hate speech.
“It was used to convey public messages but we know that
the ultra-nationalist Buddhists have their own Facebooks and are really
inciting a lot of violence and a lot of hatred against the Rohingya or other
ethnic minorities,” she said.
“I’m afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast,
and not what it originally intended.”
The most prominent of Myanmar’s hardline nationalist
monks, Wirathu, emerged from a one-year preaching ban on Saturday and said his
anti-Muslim rhetoric had nothing to do with violence in Rakhine state.
Facebook suspends and sometimes removes anyone that
“consistently shares content promoting hate”, the company said last month in
response to a question about Wirathu’s account.
“If a person consistently shares content promoting hate,
we may take a range of actions such as temporarily suspending their ability to
post and ultimately, removal of their account.”