World

Rohingya Refugees Sue Facebook For $150 Billion Over Myanmar Violence

newshungar 3 years ago 3 min read

Yangon: Rohingya refugees from Myanmar sued Meta Platforms Inc., previously known as Facebook, with $ 150 billion on charges that social media companies did not take action against anti-rohingya hatred speeches that contribute to violence.
Complaints of US grade, submitted in California on Monday by the law firm Edelson PC and Fields PLC, argued that the company’s failure to police content and its platform design contributed to Rohingya’s violence faced by the Rohingya community.

In coordinated action, the British lawyer also submitted a notification letter to the London Facebook office.

A meta spokesman said in a statement: “We were surprised by the crimes committed against Rohingya in Myanmar. We have built a dedicated Burmese speaker team, prohibiting Tatmadaw (Myanmar Military), disrupting the network that manipulates public debate and taken action The wrong information is dangerous to help keep people safe. We have also invested in Burma-language technology to reduce the prevalence of violations of content. “

The company previously said it was “too slow to prevent wrong information and hate” in Myanmar.

A spokesman for Myanmar Junta did not answer a telephone call from Reuters who was looking for comments about legal action against Facebook.

In 2018, the UN human rights investigation said the use of Facebook has played a key role in spreading hatred speeches that trigger violence.

The Reuters investigation of the year was quoted in US complaints, found more than 1,000 examples of posts, comments, and images that attacked Rohingya and other Muslims on Facebook. Almost all are in the main local language, Burma.

Invective posts include calling Rohingya or other Muslims dogs, maggots, and rapists, suggesting them to be fed pigs, and urge them to be shot or destroyed.

Post is tolerated regardless of Facebook rules that specifically prohibit to attack ethnic groups with “violent speeches or dehumanization” or compare them with animals.

Facebook says it is protected from the obligation to the content posted by users by US internet law known as part 230, which accommodates that the online platform is not responsible for the content posted by third parties. The complaint said he tried to apply Myanmar’s law to claims if section 230 was raised as defense.

Although the US court can apply foreign laws for cases where alleged losses and activities by companies occurred in other countries, two legal experts interviewed by Reuters said they did not know a successful precedent for foreign laws called on lawsuits where Part 230 Protection can apply.

Anupam Chander, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that asking for Myanmar’s law is not “inappropriate.” But he predicted that “it is impossible to succeed,” said that “it would be strange for Congress to take action taken under US law but allowed them to continue foreign laws.”

More than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims fled from Rakhine Myanmar in August 2017 after a military crackdown which was said by refugees including mass murder and rape. Groups of rights document the killings of civilians and village burning.

The Myanmar authorities said they were fighting against the rebellion and denied doing a systematic cruelty.

The International Criminal Court has opened a case into allegations of crime in the region. In September, a US federal judge ordered Facebook to release account notes connected with anti-rohingya violence in Myanmar that the social media giant was closed.

Reference demands of new actions claim by Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen, which leaked the cache of internal documents this year, that the company was not a rough police in countries where the speech would cause the most damage.

This complaint also quoted a recent media report, including the Reuters report last month, that Myanmar’s military uses a fake social media account to be involved in what is widely referred to in the military as a “information battle.”