Just as the UN issued a damning report accusing Myanmar’s military of genocide against the Rohingya people, Facebook has announced it has banned 20 individuals and organizations from the site in Myanmar. That ban includes 18 Facebook accounts, one Instagram account, and 52 Facebook Pages, which in total were followed by over 12 million people:
Specifically, we are banning 20 individuals and organizations from Facebook in Myanmar—including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the military’s Myawady television network. International experts, most recently in a report by the UN Human Rights Council-authorized Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, have found evidence that many of these individuals and organizations committed or enabled serious human rights abuses in the country. And we want to prevent them from using our service to further inflame ethnic and religious tensions.
The UN’s report found that Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, had carried out “undoubtedly what amounted to the gravest crimes under international law” in several states in Myanmar “killing indiscriminately, gang raping women, assaulting children, and burning entire villages.”
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