The Guardian :
Facebook is among a number of companies from the US, UK, France, Switzerland and China named on a “dirty list” of corporations accused of involvement in human rights and environmental violations in Myanmar, or of doing business with the country’s military, which is accused of genocide.
A list of 49 companies, compiled by the pressure group Burma Campaign UK, reveals the global breadth of international organisations that have continued to provide arms, infrastructure, technology, engineering and expertise to the Burmese military, or supported projects that have been accused of causing environmental destruction, such as hydroelectric dams and jade mines.
Burma Campaign UK said Facebook was on the “dirty list” because it had “consistently allowed its platform to be used to incite hatred and violence [against] minorities in Burma, in particular the Rohingya Muslim minority and Muslims in general”.
Facebook has also come under fire elsewhere for allowing racially inflammatory and harmful content to proliferate on its platform unchecked for years.
A recent UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar specifically singled out the social media company as playing a role in further stoking ethnic tensions.
And in November, an independent report commissioned by Facebook concluded that, in Myanmar, “Facebook has become a
means for those seeking to spread hate and cause harm, and posts have been linked to offline violence”. Burma Campaign UK acknowledged that Facebook had recently taken action to rectify abuse of social media in Myanmar, but in the “dirty list” accused it of not going far enough.
“It [Facebook] continues to host the page of the Information Committee, formerly State Counsellor Information Committee, which is run from Aung San Suu Kyi’s office,” it said, referring to Myanmar’s leader, once an opposition figure backed by the west but now a pariah.
“Since 2016 this was one of the main official government/military pages on Facebook used for inciting fear and hatred of the Rohingya, including the notorious ‘Fake Rape’ poster denying that independently verified claims of rape of Rohingya women by the Burmese military are true.”
In a statement to the Guardian, a Facebook spokesperson said: “We have invested heavily in people, technology and partnerships to examine and address the abuse of Facebook in Myanmar. As part of this work, we have detected, investigated and taken action on a variety of abuse, including military-linked abuse.
“We have banned 20 individuals and organisations from Facebook in Myanmar, including Sen Gen Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the military’s Myawaddy television network. We have also taken down pages and accounts that were covertly pushing the messages of the Myanmar military.”
Another US tech company named on the list was Cloudflare, which is accused of providing cybersecurity infrastructure for Min Aung Hlaing’s website. Min Aung Hlaing has been accused of war crimes by a UN fact-finding mission. He has not responded to the UN accusations.
Speaking to the Guardian, Doug Kramer, the general counsel at Cloudflare, said that “as an infrastructure company that doesn’t do anything with the content – doesn’t host it, doesn’t run it through algorithms, doesn’t recommend it – we think it is a dangerous situation for us to start passing judgment on content and taking action”.
Facebook is among a number of companies from the US, UK, France, Switzerland and China named on a “dirty list” of corporations accused of involvement in human rights and environmental violations in Myanmar, or of doing business with the country’s military, which is accused of genocide.
A list of 49 companies, compiled by the pressure group Burma Campaign UK, reveals the global breadth of international organisations that have continued to provide arms, infrastructure, technology, engineering and expertise to the Burmese military, or supported projects that have been accused of causing environmental destruction, such as hydroelectric dams and jade mines.
Burma Campaign UK said Facebook was on the “dirty list” because it had “consistently allowed its platform to be used to incite hatred and violence [against] minorities in Burma, in particular the Rohingya Muslim minority and Muslims in general”.
Facebook has also come under fire elsewhere for allowing racially inflammatory and harmful content to proliferate on its platform unchecked for years.
A recent UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar specifically singled out the social media company as playing a role in further stoking ethnic tensions.
And in November, an independent report commissioned by Facebook concluded that, in Myanmar, “Facebook has become a
means for those seeking to spread hate and cause harm, and posts have been linked to offline violence”. Burma Campaign UK acknowledged that Facebook had recently taken action to rectify abuse of social media in Myanmar, but in the “dirty list” accused it of not going far enough.
“It [Facebook] continues to host the page of the Information Committee, formerly State Counsellor Information Committee, which is run from Aung San Suu Kyi’s office,” it said, referring to Myanmar’s leader, once an opposition figure backed by the west but now a pariah.
“Since 2016 this was one of the main official government/military pages on Facebook used for inciting fear and hatred of the Rohingya, including the notorious ‘Fake Rape’ poster denying that independently verified claims of rape of Rohingya women by the Burmese military are true.”
In a statement to the Guardian, a Facebook spokesperson said: “We have invested heavily in people, technology and partnerships to examine and address the abuse of Facebook in Myanmar. As part of this work, we have detected, investigated and taken action on a variety of abuse, including military-linked abuse.
“We have banned 20 individuals and organisations from Facebook in Myanmar, including Sen Gen Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the military’s Myawaddy television network. We have also taken down pages and accounts that were covertly pushing the messages of the Myanmar military.”
Another US tech company named on the list was Cloudflare, which is accused of providing cybersecurity infrastructure for Min Aung Hlaing’s website. Min Aung Hlaing has been accused of war crimes by a UN fact-finding mission. He has not responded to the UN accusations.
Speaking to the Guardian, Doug Kramer, the general counsel at Cloudflare, said that “as an infrastructure company that doesn’t do anything with the content – doesn’t host it, doesn’t run it through algorithms, doesn’t recommend it – we think it is a dangerous situation for us to start passing judgment on content and taking action”.
