Rohingya genocide: Facebook faces massive $200 bn legal action in UK, US

LONDON: Lawyers in the UK and the US on Monday initiated coordinated legal campaigns against Facebook, now known as Meta, on behalf of Rohingya Muslims for its alleged role in facilitating the genocide perpetrated by the Myanmar regime and extremist civilians against the Rohingya people.

According to the lawyers, Facebook contributed to the 2017 genocide of Rohingya Muslims by allowing hate speech against the persecuted minority to be propagated in Myanmar. The United Nations had described the violence as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

The legal claims, which are a culmination of substantial legal research and investigation, seek to go further and hold Facebook accountable before a court of law. The total value of the claims exceeds nearly $200 billion, according to a statement by the lawyers.

Facebook has admitted that it did not do enough to stop its platform from being used to create division and incite real world violence. But, in its 2018 report, the UN described the social networking giant as a group having "an extraordinary and outsized role" in the country.

"We are seeking justice for the Rohingya people. This powerful global company must be held to account for its role in permitting the spread of hateful anti-Rohingya propaganda which directly led to unspeakable violence. Facebook turned away while a genocide was being perpetrated - putting profit before the human rights of the Rohingya people," Tun Khin, President of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, in the statement.

"Big Tech needs to be held accountable for amplifying inflammatory, hateful content that can lead to real world harm. Our own research found that Facebook's recommendation algorithm directed users in Myanmar towards content that incited violence and pushed misinformation during the early and brutal days of the military coup. Court cases like these are critically important, as is legislation to help prevent this from happening again," added Naomi Hirst, campaign leader at Global Witness.

In his Senate testimony, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that "we need to do more", while Adam Mosseri, a vice president of product management at Facebook stated that "we lose some sleep over this", and a former member of Facebook's Integrity team recently acknowledged that "I, working for Facebook, had been a party to genocide".

However, the allegations levelled against Facebook include that the social media platform used algorithms that amplified hate speech against the Rohingya people on its platform. It failed in its policy and in practice to invest sufficiently in content moderators who spoke Burmese or Rohingya or local fact checkers with an understanding of the political situation in Myanmar. (IANS)

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