Rohingya refugees sue Facebook for negligence & encouraging crimes against them

Marking the latest setback for Meta Platform Inc., Rohingya refugees have sued Facebook for negligence and encouraging crimes against them. On Tuesday, Guardian reported that a coordinated legal action against the social media company has been launched both in the UK and the US. Demanding compensation worth more than £150bn, the Rohingyas said that Facebook’s algorithms amplified hate speech against them, eventually galvanising their prosecution and genocide in Myanmar. In their lawsuit, the Muslim community also noted that despite knowledge, Facebook failed to take down the inflammatory posts.  

“(Facebook was) willing to trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration in a small country in south-east Asia,” an excerpt from the complaint filed in northern district court of San Francisco stated. Facebook is headquartered in Menlo Park, San Francisco. 

“In the end, there was so little for Facebook to gain from its continued presence in Burma, and the consequences for the Rohingya people could not have been more dire. Yet, in the face of this knowledge, and possessing the tools to stop it, it simply kept marching forward,” it added. 

Facebook began operating in Myanmar in 2011 and soon became ubiquitous. A letter submitted by law firm McCue Jury & Partners to Facebook’s office in the UK highlighted that not only their clients but also their families, friends and relatives were subjected to human rights abuses, crimes and even murders. It is imperative to note that, Facebook in 2018, admitted that it failed to do enough to stop the hate crime against Rohingyas.  

“As has been widely recognised and reported, this campaign was fomented by extensive material published on and amplified by the Facebook platform,” an excerpt from the letter submitted by the law firm McCue Jury & Partners read. 

'World’s least wanted minorities'

The Rohingya community has been described as "one of the world's least wanted minorities" and "some of the world's most persecuted people" in the world. In February 1992, Myanmar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in a press release, "In actual fact, although there are (135) national races living in Myanmar today, the so-called Rohingya people is not one of them”. Years later, in 2017, the Burmese military began what United Nations described as a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing”. As per the UNHCR, over 742,000 refugees have fled to Bangladesh from Buddhist majority Myanmar since 25 August 2017.''

(Image: AP)