[Burma was long closed off by a military regime, with centuries-old tensions between its Buddhist and Muslim communities leashed by strict control over traditional media. As the country transitions into democracy, those constraints have loosened and access to the Internet has expanded rapidly, most notably through a Facebook program called Free Basics that has catapulted the platform into prominence as major source of news in Burma.]
By
Annie Gowen and Max Bearak
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Smoke
in Burma is visible from Bangladesh in Shah Porir Dip in September.
(Allison
Joyce/Getty Images)
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RANGOON,
Burma — For Buddhists in
Burma, even a quick scroll through Facebook’s news feed provides fuel for
hatred and nationalistic fervor.
An endless stream of provocative photos and
cartoons claims there is no “ethnic cleansing” against Burma’s Muslim Rohingya
minority. Instead, according to the posts, international news and human rights
organizations are falsely accusing the military of carrying out atrocities
against the Rohingya to help terrorists infiltrate the country, kill Buddhists
and carve out a separatist Islamic province.
Burma was long closed off by a military
regime, with centuries-old tensions between its Buddhist and Muslim communities
leashed by strict control over traditional media. As the country transitions
into democracy, those constraints have loosened and access to the Internet has
expanded rapidly, most notably through a Facebook program called Free Basics
that has catapulted the platform into prominence as major source of news in
Burma.
But the sudden proliferation of recently
available technologies has accelerated the spread of ethnic hatred in Burma,
stoking tensions amid a violent military crackdown that has sent more than
600,000 Rohingya fleeing across the border into Bangladesh.
Information-age Burma is defined by Facebook:
More people have access to Facebook than have regular electricity in their
homes. A recent study found that 38 percent of Facebook users in Burma got
most, if not all, of their news on the site. And news feeds in Burma are rife
with anti-Rohingya posts, shared not only by ordinary people but also by senior
military officers and the spokesman for Burma’s de facto leader, Aung Sang Suu
Kyi.
“Burma is experiencing an ugly renaissance of
genocidal propaganda,” said Matthew Smith, the co-founder of Fortify Rights, a
human rights organization working in Southeast Asia. “And it spreads like
wildfire on Facebook.”
Ruchika Budhraja, a spokeswoman for Facebook,
said the company has been ramping up its efforts in Burma to curtail hate
speech and has had a Burmese-language team in place to monitor posts “for
several years.” Facebook relies on users to flag content that might violate the
site’s complicated “community standards.” Misinformation does not qualify for
removal on its own right but can be removed if it is particularly obscene or
contains threats.
The most well-known purveyor of anti-Rohingya
social media posts is Ashin Wirathu, an enormously influential hard-line monk
who turned to Facebook after he was banned from public preaching for a year by
the government. Wirathu likened Muslims to mad dogs and posted pictures of dead
bodies he claimed were Buddhists killed by Muslims while never acknowledging
brutality faced by the Rohingya.
Facebook said in a statement that Wirathu’s
access to his account had been restricted in the past, and that some content
had been removed, but would not say whether the company regularly monitors it for
hate speech.
Other Buddhist nationalist monks also use
Facebook as a recruiting tool.
One of those monks is Thu Seikta. In a
monastery in central Rangoon, Burma’s former capital and largest city, Seikta
pulled out a silver tablet and swiped through its applications. Nearby, two
junior monks poised with their phones, filming visitors in the hushed,
wood-paneled hall. Cats snoozed on sacks of rice.
Seikta knows well that Facebook isn’t just a
place to share ideas but to mobilize followers, too. Last April, he advertised
a rally he was organizing outside the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon against the State
Department’s use of the term Rohingya and subsequently called for volunteers to
intimidate Muslim shopkeepers who work near the golden-domed Shwedagon Pagoda.
Facebook said that Seikta’s account was being
evaluated based on information provided by The Washington Post.
Seikta said the Rohingya exodus to Bangladesh
since violence broke out in late August made him happy. The Burmese military
engaged in what it called “clearance operations” in Rohingya villages and said
it only targeted Rohingya militants accused of attacking outposts of security
forces, killing officers and stealing weapons.
“Bengali people are the most dangerous people
in the world,” the monk said. “It is natural for them to go to their home
place. If they come back, there will be more violence.”
In Burma, which is also known as Myanmar, the
term Bengali takes on pejorative connotations when used to identify the
Rohingya. Much of the propaganda that spreads online reinforces the falsehood
that the Rohingya are immigrants from Bangladesh, despite the group having
historical ties to what is now Burma since before the British colonial era. And
much of its history originates on government or military accounts.
A recent Facebook post on the page of the
office of Burmese military’s commander in chief — which has more than 2 million
followers — detailed the results of a military investigation that exonerated itself
of any persecution of the Rohingya and used the term “Bengali terrorist” 41
times.
An allegation that some Rohingya burned their
own villages and then blamed it on Burmese security forces is also common. Zaw
Htay, a spokesman for the country’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, used his
Facebook page to share the claim, along with images since proven to have been
doctored. They remain on his page.
The deployment of Facebook by Suu Kyi’s
government “smacks of immaturity of governance,” said David Mathieson, an
independent Burma analyst formerly with Human Rights Watch. “The military has
embraced this as well. The commander in chief [of the armed forces] is a slave
to social media.”
Facebook’s reliance on users to flag
questionable content means people like Maung Maung Lwin, 29, a waiter at a
trendy coffee shop, are left mostly to their own wits to distinguish fact from
fake.
Lwin works and lives in Sittwe, the capital
of Burma’s Rakhine state, home to most Rohingya before these months of
upheaval. He flicked the screen of his Redmi Note 3, an inexpensive Indian-made
cellphone, to show the news of the Rohingya crisis on his Facebook feed.
His friend had posted an anti-Rohingya
cartoon that shows the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the United
Nations pushing a Trojan horse full of Rohingya militants into Burma. Further
down, dated photos of dead Burmese soldiers are attached to another post. Lwin
dismissed the first cartoon as “too political” and the second as obvious fake
news.
Lwin said he could usually tell the
difference between real and fake news. But for most, that kind of discernment
only comes with experience, and Burma is just entering the digital era.
The Internet’s power seems to have disturbed
Burma’s elected government, too — though not out of any apparent concern for
the Rohingya. On Nov. 8, Burma’s parliament approved a law that allows the
government to “to oversee and monitor the misuse of information technology
which may harm the character and morality of youths and disrupt tranquility.”
In a post written for Facebook’s “Hard
Questions” blog, a company vice president wrote of the problem of catching and
removing hate speech in Burma.
“We’ve had trouble enforcing this policy
correctly recently, mainly due to the challenges of understanding the context;
after further examination, we’ve been able to get it right,” he wrote. “But we
expect this to be a long-term challenge.”
Max Bearak reported from Washington.
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