Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Facebook, listens during a meeting at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. on Sept. 27, 2015. David Paul Morris—Bloomberg/Getty Images
Just when it seemed like Facebook’s controversies might have peaked, the company now appears to be obstructing a genocide investigation, and it’s using U.S. law to do it.
The West African nation The Gambia is seeking to hold Myanmar accountable for charges of genocide against the Rohingya people, an ethnic and religious minority. In 2016 and 2017, Myanmar soldiers and their civilian proxies massacred Rohingya men, women and children, raped women and girls and razed villages, forcing more than 800,000 to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.
Rohingya refugees are seen in a refugee camp.(Representational image: Reuters)
Three Rohingya-led parties had hoped to field at least a dozen candidates in November's vote, according to regional watchdog Fortify Rights.
A Rohingya Muslim has been barred from standing in Myanmar's upcoming election, in a decision decried by rights groups as discriminatory and a symptom of the "ongoing genocide" against the persecuted minority.
(Editors Note: This article is part of a special Just Security forum on the ongoing Gambia v. Myanmar litigation at the International Court of Justice and ways forward.)
In August 2017, the desperate plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims grabbed headlines when the military’s brutal campaign of murder, rape and other abuses forced more than 740,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. In 2019, the United Nations-backed Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar warned that the 600,000 Rohingya remaining in Myanmar’s Rakhine state faced a greater than ever threat of genocide because of the government’s attempts to “erase their identity and remove them from the country.”
On June 8, 2020, The Gambia filed an application for discovery with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The application asks the Court to compel Facebook to provide information related to the personal Facebook accounts of Myanmar officials. The information that The Gambia seeks is to be used in an action brought by The Gambia against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, The Netherlands.
Rohingya kids, who fled from oppression within ongoing military operations in Myanmars Rakhine ... [+] Getty Images
He dreamed of educating the children in his village. But soon he learned that it was dangerous for the Rohingya to dream.
Futhu in the Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. He covered his face for fear of being targeted by the authorities in Myanmar.Credit...Adam Dean for The New York Times
When he was in primary school, Futhu read a story about a girl who named her flowers. She wrote their names in a diary, logged when she planted and watered them and charted how they grew. The story was in a book Futhu’s uncle brought to their village in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State from across the border in Bangladesh — the words in English and in Bengali. Futhu was the first in his extended family to attend school — the first of 22 uncles, countless aunts and cousins — and though he excelled at Burmese and English class, he could not really understand the book on his own. His father was himself illiterate, as were most people in their community. So Futhu asked a village trader who often visited their home to read him the stories in the book, one by one.
TheJakartaPost
Yuyun Wahyuningrum
Jakarta / Fri, June 19, 2020
A burnt villages is pictured from a Myanmar military helicopter providing a tour for British foreign minister over Maungdaw, Rakhine state, on September 20, 2018. British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt's busy two-day visit comes the same week UN investigators released a damning and meticulous report detailing why six Myanmar generals should be prosecuted for genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, who were chased out of Rakhine state after the Myanmar military launched a brutal crackdown in August 2017. (AFP/Ye Aung THU / POOL )
FE THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS
FE ONLINE DESK
June 18, 2020
East West University Center for Research and Training (EWUCRT) has organised a research seminar on Rohingya genocide in Myanmar on Google Meet app.
The online seminar titled ‘Rohingya Persecutions in Myanmar: Ethnic Cleansing or Genocide? A Theoretical and Empirical Study’ was held on Wednesday.
Professor Dr. Muhammad Ziaulhaq Mamun, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the EWU, conducted the seminar while Md. Pizuar Hossain, Senior Lecturer, Department of Law,of the university was speaker.
Rohingya refugees make the journey across the Naf river from Myanmar to Bangladesh in 2017
CJ Werleman reports on a case being brought against the social media giant by The Gambia to uncover who was involved in Myanmar’s mass murder of its Muslim minority.
There are so many legitimate reasons to hate Facebook. It not only encourages polarisation and radicalisation, the company has also engineered the platform to “exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness”, which helps rake in billions of dollars in profit from nefarious political entrepreneurs, grifters and manipulators who peddle hate and sow division.
Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi leaves in a car past the protesters after attending a hearing in a case filed by Gambia against Myanmar alleging genocide against the minority Muslim Rohingya population, at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands December 10, 2019 Reuters
In 2018, UN human rights investigators said that Facebook had played a key role in spreading hate speech that fuelled violence in Myanmar
Lawyers bringing a case before the World Court accusing Myanmar of genocide against its Rohingya Muslim minority have asked a US district court to order Facebook to release posts and communications of the country’s military and police.
An Argentine court has moved one step closer to opening a historic investigation against Myanmar's military and civilian leadership over genocide against the Rohingya people, the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK) said today.
The court in Buenos Aires on Friday overturned a previous decision not to pursue a case against State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and senior officers in the Myanmar military. Instead, it has requested more information from the International Criminal Court (ICC) to ensure that a case in Argentina would not duplicate other justice efforts, BROUK said in a statement.
Director Haider Khan’s debut feature focuses on the Rohingya refugee crisis. The upcoming film, titled Rohingya, tells the story of over 9,00,000 Rohingya refugees who fled violence and persecution in Myanmar and sought refuge in Bangladesh and other countries. The film is produced by Thunder Dragon Productions of Bhutan. It also highlights “the unsung Special Forces Indian paras, also known as the maroon berets of our nation.”
Director Haider Khan’s debut feature focuses on the Rohingya refugee crisis.
Rohingya poster (Photo | Twitter)
Director Haider Khan’s debut feature focuses on the Rohingya refugee crisis. The upcoming film, titled Rohingya, tells the story of over 9,00,000 Rohingya refugees who fled violence and persecution in Myanmar and sought refuge in Bangladesh and other countries. The film, shot in Bhutan and North East regions, is produced by Thunder Dragon Productions of Bhutan. It also highlights “the unsung Special Forces Indian paras, also known as the maroon berets of our nation.”
On 11 November 2019, the Republic of The Gambia filed suit against the Republic of the Union of Myanmar in the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) for violating the Genocide Convention. Two months later and at the request of The Gambia, the ICJ ordered the government of Myanmar to take certain actions to protect the Rohingya via “provisional measures” while the case proceeds. This historic lawsuit brings a critical focus to Myanmar’s responsibility as a state for the Rohingya genocide.
The Gambia’s case focuses on the actions of Myanmar’s security forces, starting in October 2016 and then again in August 2017, where they engaged in so-called “clearance operations” against the Rohingya, a distinct Muslim ethnic minority, in Rakhine State. The operations, in particular those that started in August 2017, were characterized by brutal violence and serious human rights violations on a mass scale. Survivors report indiscriminate killings, rape and sexual violence, arbitrary detention, torture, beatings, and forced displacement. As a result, an estimated 745,000 people – mostly ethnic Rohingya – were forced to flee to Bangladesh. The “clearance operations” followed decades of institutionalized discrimination and systematic persecution of the Rohingya, including the passage of laws that stripped the Rohingya of their citizenship, restricted their religious freedoms, as well as reproductive and marital rights.
As recently as two weeks ago, some of the few Rohingya remaining in Myanmar were still trying to make their way across the border to the relative safety of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. This comes 16 months after the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed Rohingya who had previously fled Myanmar would be helped to return to the country of their birth, and over two months since the International Court of Justice ruled that Myanmar must take a number of steps to protect the Rohingya, who it judged as “at risk of genocide.”
The Gambia — with the backing of the Organisation of Islamic States — instituted the litigation as a party to the Genocide Convention that Myanmar also belongs to. It did so based on Article IX of the Convention that allows disputes over its ‘interpretation, application or fulfilment’ to be referred to the ICJ.
The focus on William Schabas’ history and personal views detracts from the more substantive issues at play in allegations of genocide in Myanmar.
When one of Myanmar’s defense lawyers arrived at Yangon University to give a lecture this weekend, he was greeted by half a dozen protesters criticizing Myanmar for denying accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice. It was a small turn out to be sure, but William Schabas has become a lightning rod for criticism internationally.
From the moment Schabas was announced to be joining Myanmar’s defense team, he has received an abnormal level of attention. First, a 2013 interview with Al Jazeera was circulated, where he discussed the treatment of the persecuted Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. “We’re moving into a zone where the word [genocide] can be used,” he said. These comments were used against him by those who said it proved even Myanmar’s defense team knew it was guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority. Schabas would later insist this quote was taken out of context.
(Editors Note: This article is part of a special Just Security forum on the ongoing Gambia v. Myanmar litigation at the International Court of Justice and ways forward.)
An Argentine court has moved one step closer to opening a historic investigation against Myanmar's military and civilian leadership over genocide against the Rohingya people, the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK) said today.
