Amnesty International Says Meta Boosted Myanmar's Genocide

A new report fromAmnesty International sheds light on the atrocities committed against the Muslim minority by the security forces of the country.

In describing Meta's role in the humanitarian catastrophe,Amnesty laid out arguments for compensation to meet the educational needs of the displaced population.

According to the report, Meta was a significant contributor to the genocide. The company made a lot of money from the content that aided the government in laying the groundwork for a military-led ethnic cleansing campaign.

Mass dissemination of messages that advocated hatred, inciting violence, and discrimination against the Rohingya, as well as other dehumanizing and discriminatory anti-Rohingya content, poured fuel on the fire of long-standing discrimination and substantially increased the risk of an outbreak of mass violence, according to

In late 2016 the security forces of the country kicked off a series of brutal assaults on the people of the state of Rakhine. Satellite images of security forces burning thousands of homes to the ground showed widespread human rights abuses. The killings and other atrocities were committed by radicalized Buddhist nationalists.

TheMyanmar military launched a campaign of genocide that included the use of battlefield weaponry such as gunships and mortars.

In interviews with human rights groups, survivors have described widespread incidents of torture and rape by security forces, as well as the intentional burning of villages and crops to starve those not beaten or shot to death. The world's largest refugee camp was formed by more than one million people who were displaced in the last year.

The role of social media in spreading content that aided extremists in persecuting and dehumanizing a group of people has been documented in a report by theAmnesty. "We used to live together peacefully along with the other ethnic groups in the country." The government was against us, despite their intentions. The public used to follow their religious leaders, but when they started spreading hate on Facebook, their minds changed.

Agns Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said that a storm of hatred was created by Facebook in the months and years prior to the atrocities. Meta was making money from the echo chamber of hatred created by its hate-spiralling algorithms.

Callamard said that the company should be held to account. She said that it has a responsibility to give back to the people it hurt.

There are no examples of hate speech on the platform. In September of last year, Min Hlaing, who seized power for himself in last year's coup d'état, wrote in a post: "We openly declare that our country has no Muslim race."

It took Meta almost a year to stop using his account.

The dehumanization of the Muslim minority is an important step in the path to genocide. It aided the government in getting the military to perpetrate the killings as well as gaining the acceptance of the public. Chris Sidoti, an international human rights lawyer, is quoted in the report as saying that dehumanization allows humans to undertake anti-human activities by reducing the victim to a sub-human level. Setting fire to a house with women and kids in it is nothing more than pouring petrol down an ant nest.

The director of public policy for emerging markets at Meta said in a statement that he supports efforts to hold the military accountable for its crimes against the people of the Muslim minority.

To that end, we have made voluntary, lawful data disclosures to the UN's Investigative Mechanism onMyanmar and to The Gambia, and are currently participating in the complaint process of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. feedback from local civil society organizations and international institutions, including the UN Fact- Finding Mission on Myanmar, as well as our ongoing human rights risk management, are some of the factors that guide our safety and integrity work inMyanmar.

Meta contributed to the dehumanization of the Muslim community. The human rights group has joined a chorus of experts who argue that Facebook benefits from engagement driven by divisive and inflammatory speech. The report says that Meta's business model is to blame for the spread of harmful content. The more engaged users are, the more ad revenue Meta earns.

Many decades have passed since the oppression and brutalization of the rohingya. They are considered to be one of the most persecutiond people in the world. Their circumstance is often reduced in the press to a result of religious conflict, but it is more aptly described as a people's struggle for identity.

The annexation of Arkan by the British Empire in the mid-1820s was linked to the influx of workers from India and Bangladesh. Their culture, religion, and language are distinct from the country's major ethnic groups, despite being dispossessed.

The Karam, who attained recognition as one of the country's "national races" long ago, are not included in the definition of foreigners.

Even if the conflict to which it gave rise was the result of colonialist provocation, religion is still a significant factor.

In 1942, tens of thousands of people were killed, raped, and tortured. The foundation for decades of state-supported violence and discrimination was laid by the military junta that took over the country in the late 20th century. The Ne Win government officially recognized the state's rightful inhabitants in 1974. The right to self-identify as Rohingya was denied by the assigned status of'resident foreigners'.

The government calls themBengali, which is another way to reinforce the criminal, invader- immigrant brand that has been foisted upon them.