Rohingya Muslims living in the UK and the USA have filed a lawsuit of $150bn against Facebook for promoting violence and hate speech against the Rohingya community in Myanmar. While Rohingyas themselves have been accused of massacring Hindus by Amnesty International, the ones taking shelter in USA and UK are now demanding compensation of more than 150 billion dollars from the owners of the social media application Facebook.
The Rohingyas have accused Facebook of “the dissemination of hateful and dangerous misinformation to continue for years” with other allegations that included amplifying the hate speeches made against the Rohingya community, not recruiting moderators and fact-checkers who had knowledge about the political situation in Myanmar and failing to take down posts and hate speeches targeting the Rohingya community.
Some lawyers in the USA have filed a legal complaint against Facebook and accused the platform of trading human lives for better market penetration in Myanmar. As per reports, Facebook had failed to moderate posts made in local languages of Burmese and Rakhine that contained anti-Muslim hate speech and false information about Rohingya terrorist plots. British lawyers have also sent a legal notice to Facebook’s London office.
Facebook has mentioned the US internet law section 230 in its defence which states that online platforms are not liable for content posted by third parties. The complaint however wanted to invoke Myanmar law which was deemed as far-fetched by some legal experts.
Notably, a Rohingya Muslim named Mohammed Taher from one of the camps in Bangladesh has welcomed the decision of the lawyers and stated that Facebook was involved in spreading anti-Rohingya ‘propaganda’.
It is important to note here that in October of this year, a suspected terror attack happened in one of these Bangladeshi refugee camps where at least six people lost their lives and many more were injured. According to Rohingyas, they have alleged that the attack was carried out by ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army) consisting of Rohingya refugees from those camps themselves who wanted to establish a terrorist training centre inside Camp No 18. Furthermore, Rohingya refugees camps in Bangladesh have become notorious for all kinds of illegal activities including drug smuggling and religious fundamentalism.
Amnesty had confirmed that Rohingya Muslims had massacred Hindus
In 2018, Amnesty International, the Indian arm of which has had quite a few run-ins with the law, confirmed the massacre of the Hindus by Rohingya Muslims even as Indian ‘liberals’ tried to whitewash their crimes. As per the reports, an investigation carried out by Amnesty has revealed that an armed Rohingya group was responsible for at least one, and potentially a second, massacre of up to 99 Hindu men, women and children as well as unlawful abductions in August 2017.
Amnesty based its report on dozens of interviews conducted in Rakhine and across the border in Bangladesh and throws light on the largely under-reported human rights abuses by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) fighters, who sowed fear among Hindus and other ethnic communities with these brutal attacks. The report gave details of the massacre in Kha Maung Seik in August 2017, killing Hindus, executing style, sparing those who agreed to ‘convert’ to Islam. The report also stated other killings and violent attacks against the other ethnic and minority communities by the Rohingya terrorists.
The report said, “Eight Hindu women and eight of their children were abducted and spared after ARSA fighters forced the women to agree to “convert” to Islam. The survivors were forced to flee with the fighters to Bangladesh several days later, before being repatriated to Myanmar in October 2017 with the support of the Bangladeshi and Myanmar authorities”.
