‘Kill more’: Facebook fails to detect hate against Rohingya

NEW YORK POST
Associated Press
March 22, 2022 

Rights group Global Witness submitted eight paid ads for approval to Facebook, each including different versions of hate speech against Rohingya, which were all approved for publishing. AP 

 JAKARTA, Indonesia — A new report has found that Facebook failed to detect blatant hate speech and calls to violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority years after such behavior was found to have played a determining role in the genocide against them.

The report shared exclusively with The Associated Press showed the rights group Global Witness submitted eight paid ads for approval to Facebook, each including different versions of hate speech against Rohingya. All eight ads were approved by Facebook to be published.

 

Facebook's 'Double Standard' On Hate Speech Against Russians

Market Screener
03/21/2022

Meta's decision to allow hate speech against Russians is troubling and can impact other conflict areas, say experts

Facebook's decision to allow hate speech against Russians due to the war in Ukraine breaks its own rules on incitement, and shows a "double standard" that could hurt users caught in other conflicts, digital rights experts and activists said.

Facebook owner Meta Platforms will temporarily allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, Reuters reported last week.

It will also allow praise for a right-wing battalion "strictly in the context of defending Ukraine", in a decision that experts say demonstrates the platform's bias.

The move represents a "glaring" double standard when set against Meta's failure to curb hate speech in other war zones, said Marwa Fatafta at digital rights group Access Now.

1 year later, hate speech and threats against Rohingya continue

Hakimie Amrie Hisamudin
-April 23, 2021 

PETALING JAYA: It has been a year since the wave of hate speech and threats against the Rohingya community in Malaysia started. However, human rights activists say the hostility remains unresolved.

Rights activist John Quinley of Fortify Rights, who has documented abuses against the Rohingya in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Malaysia and India, said the current situation against the community remains a cause for concern.

“Since the Covid-19 pandemic, anti-refugee sentiment in Malaysia has increased,” he told FMT.

Apart from hateful remarks on media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, Quinley said, Rohingya refugees also received death threats and verbal abuse.

“Prominent Rohingya activists have gone into hiding out of well-founded fears of violence,” he said.

In April last year, social media users flooded Facebook and Twitter with hateful remarks and threats against Rohingya refugees in the wake of fake news that an activist from the community demanded that they be granted citizenship.

The fake news, attributed to Zafar Ahmad Abdul Ghani, who heads the Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human Rights Organisation Malaysia (Merhrom), came following reports that Malaysian authorities had blocked a boat carrying starving Rohingya refugees from landing.

Zafar denied that he demanded citizenship for the refugees but his clarification failed to quell the hostility towards the community.

Hate speech rife in Myanmar ahead of elections: Study

AA

Md. Kamruzzaman

DHAKA, Bangladesh 

04.11.2020

Ahead of general elections, state-sponsored hate speech, fake news, incitement to violence have mar campaigns, says report 

 A new study on the ongoing general election season in Myanmar documented cases of social media hate speech and disinformation by authorities against the country's minority communities.

The study, released on Wednesday by the UK-based Burma Human Rights Network (BHRN), reported 39 cases of hate speech and disinformation, of which some were shared over online platforms more then 2,000 times.

Facebook Improving Hate Speech Detection Ahead of Myanmar Election

The New York Times
By Reuters
Sept. 1, 2020

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Tuesday that it was preparing for Myanmar's general election in November by improving the detection and removal of hate speech and content that incites violence and preventing the spread of misinformation.

The company said in a blog that between now and Nov. 22, it would remove "verifiable misinformation and unverifiable rumours" that are assessed as having the potential to suppress the vote or damage the "integrity" of the electoral process.

Will Facebook Finally Choose to Protect Rohingya Muslims From Further Genocide?

BYLINE TIMES
CJ Werleman
16 June 2020

 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.

Malaysia urged to end violent threats against Rohingya refugees

Aljazeera
11' May 2020

Rights groups call on Malaysia to act after prominent Rohingya activists threatened with murder and sexual violence.

This handout photo taken and released on April 5, 2020 by the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency shows a wooden boat carrying suspected Rohingya migrants detained in Malaysian territorial waters off the island of Langkawi. [Handout via AFP]

Dozens of human rights groups have called on Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to address hate speech and violent threats against Rohingya refugees in the country amid a slew of online posts threatening murder and sexual violence.

Monday's open letter, signed by 83 organisations, said the surge in hateful messages attacking the Rohingya community was causing fear of physical violence and discrimination among the refugees.

Hate speech is un-Malaysian

FMT
Raees Ahmed
May 10, 2020

As a Canadian with strong ties to the Malaysian community, I am appalled to see hate speech and anti-refugee sentiments unfolding in Malaysia today.

Myanmar Anti-Hate Speech Orders Aimed at Halting Discrimination Against Rohingya

Radio Free Asia
2020-05-04

Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay speaks during a press conference at the Presidential Palace in Naypyidaw, Jan. 7, 2019. Credit: AFP

 

The government of Myanmar has ordered all civil servants to stop using hate speech on social media, a persistent problem in the majority Buddhist country, nearly three years after soldiers and local militias drove more than 740,000 Muslim Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh.

The order, announced by President’s Office Spokesperson Zaw Htay, requires that civil servants monitor and report online behavior to the central government. Critics say the move might be an attempt to clean up Myanmar’s image ahead of future international hearings on the alleged genocide of Rohingya in the country’s western Rakhine state.

Myanmar’s ‘Rohingya’ vs ‘Bengali’ Hate Speech Debate

THE I DIPLOMAT
By Shafiur Rahman 
December 21, 2019
A new campaign seeks to single out local media outlets that refer to the Rohingya ethnic group as “Bengalis.”

Rohingya activists have accused the Myanmar Press Council, a quasi-government media adjudication and ethics body, of defending the practice of using the word “Bengali” to refer to the Rohingya. Rights groups and Rohingya advocates argue that the term amounts to “hate speech” and that it is directly linked to misinformation, “fake news,” and vilification campaigns against the Rohingya actively promoted by the government, the military and others.

Myanmar’s internet and social media landscape has come under increasing scrutiny after a Reuters investigation found over a thousand examples of hate speech attacking the Rohingya and Muslims of Myanmar. Following a UN report’s conclusion that the army had carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya “with genocidal intent,” a number of social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, banned the accounts of Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s army chief, and others in an unprecedented move to control hate speech.

Facebook in India Is Drowning in Anti-Muslim Hate Speech

Vice
By David Gilbert
Jun 12, 2019

At the end of February, Facebook launched an ad campaign in the Indian state of Maharashtra that was designed to inform users about resources available to protect against harassment and hate speech.

But instead of informing the public, it enraged them.

Facebook’s mistake: portraying a troll as a member of the lower Dalit caste, an oversight that essentially reinforced ugly stereotypes against the very group that is most discriminated against on its platform. Hundreds of users reported the ad as hate speech, and within a day the ad was removed. But the incident symbolized Facebook’s mounting failures in its biggest market, particularly when it comes to the spread of harassment and hate speech.

Lessons about hate and genocide being rolled out in Quebec high schools

EDMONTON JOURNAL

The Canadian Press

Updated: April 6, 2019 

 

 

A survey that polled 1,100 Canadians indicated 22 per cent of respondents between 18 and 34 years old were unaware or unsure if they had heard of the Holocaust 

 

MONTREAL — A foundation that educates young people about genocide says it is partnering with the Quebec government to offer high school teachers a guide on how to sensitize students to the warning signs leading to the systematic destruction of a group of people.

UN Rights Envoy on Myanmar Decries Widespread Hate Speech

RADIO FREE ASIA 
2019-03-07

Yanghee Lee, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, speaks at a press conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Jan. 25, 2019.

The United Nations human rights envoy on Myanmar has decried the “pervasive nature of hate speech” targeting Muslims by government officials and school textbooks in the Buddhist-majority country, according to a new report she wrote for the U.N. Human Rights Council.