BANGKOK — Myanmar made international headlines twice this week, with each instance provoking a drastically different response from the country’s citizens.
First, a United Nations panel recommended that Myanmar’s top military commanders stand trial for genocide in relation to what it has called the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim minority.
Second, Facebook barred from its network 20 individuals and organizations linked to the military for committing or enabling “serious human rights abuses in the country.”
The United Nations report, which highlighted the massacre of at least 10,000 Rohingya Muslims over the past year, was largely ignored by the local news media and internet users.
The Facebook ban, by contrast, catalyzed a frenzied, vociferous response in Myanmar, where the social-media platform is so popular that it is synonymous with the internet.
On Facebook — where else? — users in Myanmar debated whether they should boycott the social media site for denigrating their military and spiritual leaders. In addition to the bans announced on Aug. 27, Facebook in January froze the accounts of extremist Buddhist monks who had fanned Islamophobia in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.
“We have called Facebook to ask why they have done this,” said U Zaw Htay, a Myanmar government spokesman. “We worry that this action will have an impact on national reconciliation.”
On Facebook, Mr. Zaw Htay has dismissed well-documented Rohingya accounts of sexual violence committed by Myanmar soldiers as “fake rape.”
Even as Myanmar’s military leaders were ushered into a hall of infamy that includes war criminals from Rwanda and the Balkans, the nation’s civilian leaders have refused to admit to a systematic military campaign to persecute the Rohingya.
For more read the full of article at The Nytimes
