A cellphone user looks at a Facebook page at a shop in Latha street, Yangon, Myanmar, August 8, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Ann Wang
Yangon, Myanmar: In April, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told US senators that the social media site was hiring dozens more Burmese speakers to review hate speech posted in Myanmar. The situation was dire.
Some 700,000 members of the Rohingya community had recently fled the country amid a military crackdown and ethnic violence. In March, a United Nations investigator said Facebook was used to incite violence and hatred against the Muslim minority group. The platform, she said, had “turned into a beast.”
Four months after Zuckerberg’s pledge to act, here is a sampling of posts from Myanmar that were viewable this month on Facebook:
One user posted a restaurant advertisement featuring Rohingya-style food. “We must fight them the way Hitler did the Jews, damn kalars!” the person wrote, using a pejorative for the Rohingya. That post went up in December 2013.
Another post showed a news article from an army-controlled publication about attacks on police stations by Rohingya militants. “These non-human kalar dogs, the Bengalis, are killing and destroying our land, our water and our ethnic people,” the user wrote. “We need to destroy their race.” That post went up last September, as the violence against the Rohingya peaked.
A third user shared a blog item that pictures a boatload of Rohingya refugees landing in Indonesia. “Pour fuel and set fire so that they can meet Allah faster,” a commenter wrote. The post appeared 11 days after Zuckerberg’s Senate testimony.
Avaaz.org Campaign director Nell Greenberg walks among dozens of cardboard cut-outs of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg while holding a protest outside of the Capitol building in Washington on April 10, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Leah Millis/File Photo