Facebook has removed accounts on its platform belonging to businesses controlled by the junta in Myanmar as the company responds to a £150 billion lawsuit that claims it fuelled the persecution and mass murder of Rohingya Muslims.
The legal action against the social media giant was launched in Britain and the US on Monday by lawyers representing the victims of the 2017 genocide perpetrated against the Rohingya by the military and sections of the Buddhist majority population in Myanmar.
News of the lawsuits was first reported by The Times.
Facebook, which recently changed its corporate name to Meta, permeated the Burmese internet in 2011, and, primarily through being pre-installed on mobile phones, built a near monopoly in the country. The platform’s algorithms promoted hate speech and misinformation, directed at the Rohingya minority, according to the legal action.
At least 10,000 Rohingya died in the genocide and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes in the Rakhine state in the far west of the country, mostly to neighbouring Bangladesh where many remain in huge refugee camps.
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Burma Campaign UK, a pro-democracy pressure group, claims that Facebook previously refused to close down social media accounts associated with military companies, despite their involvement in the military coup which deposed the democratically elected government in February.
“Facebook have known for years [that] these military companies finance human rights violations,” said Mark Farmaner, Burma Campaign’s director.
“Now, within hours of legal cases being filed regarding their role in the genocide of the Rohingya, Facebook decide to take down military company pages.”
Facebook issued a statement on its website regarding the removal of the pages, saying it was “expanding our ban of the Myanmar military (‘Tatmadaw��) and will now also remove pages, groups and accounts representing military-controlled businesses”.
The company said: “The Myanmar military has far-reaching commercial interests which are not always possible to definitively determine.” It added that it would be following the work of the UN fact-finding mission to the country.
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In response to a request for comment on the legal case from The Times, a spokesman from Meta said: “We’re appalled by the crimes committed against the Rohingya people in Myanmar. We’ve built a dedicated team of Burmese speakers, banned the Tatmadaw, disrupted networks manipulating public debate and taken action on harmful misinformation to help keep people safe. We’ve also invested in Burmese-language technology to reduce the prevalence of violating content.”
However, according to Burma Campaign UK, the social media giant has so far failed to co-operate with the legal team working on the genocide prosecution at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The human rights group said Meta was “even taking legal action to try to avoid releasing information it holds regarding how the military used Facebook to communicate, organise and incite support for the genocide of the Rohingya”.
Farmaner said: “The belated decision to remove military company pages appears more an act of desperation after being sued for £150 billion for being involved in Rohingya genocide than any genuine concern for human rights.”
