Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 52 (2020)
Crime as Cognitive Constraint
When Facebook took down Wirathu’s page in late January 2018,66 the
page had “hundreds of thousands of followers,” 67 a substantial amount
given the 18 million Facebook users in Myanmar then. 68 Facebook
banned MaBaTha and Wirathu for violating Facebook’s Dangerous
Individuals and Organizations policy. 69
The Myanmar civilian government and military, likewise
responsible for spreading hate speech and false information against the
Rohingya, also maintained Facebook pages. 70 The Facebook page of the
Tatmadaw’s Office of the Commander-in-Chief, Senior General Min
Aung Hlaing, had 2.9 million followers before it was taken down by
Facebook in August 2018. 71 Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s separate
official Facebook page had 1.4 million followers before it was taken
down. 72 Other government agencies also amassed a huge social media
following. The official page of the State Counsellor’s Information
Committee has 400,000 followers, 73 while that of the Ministry of
Information has 1.5 million followers. 74 The Facebook page of these two
government agencies are still on the platform, despite having posted
anti-Rohingya narratives in the past, as reported by the FFM.75
Similarly, the newspaper, Global New Light of Myanmar, operated by
the Ministry of Information and whose previous publications depicted
66.
Facebook Says Page of Firebrand Anti-Rohingya Myanmar Monk Wirathu
STRAITS
TIMES
(Feb.
27,
2018),
Removed,
THE
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/facebook-says-page-offirebrand-anti- rohingya-myanmar-monk-wirathu-removed.
67.
Laignee Barron, Nationalist Monk Known as the ‘Burmese bin Laden’
Has Been Stopped From Spreading Hate on Facebook, TIME (Feb. 28,
2018), http://time.com/5178790/facebook-removes-wirathu/.
68.
Facebook blacklists Myanmar hardline Buddhist group, FRONTIER
MYANMAR (June 7, 2018), https://frontiermyanmar.net/en/facebookblacklists-myanmar-hardline-buddhist-group
69.
Id.; Sara Su, Update on Myanmar, FACEBOOK (Aug. 15, 2018),
https://about.fb.com/news/2018/08/update-on-myanmar/;
Removing
Myanmar Military Officials from Facebook, FACEBOOK (Aug. 28, 2018),
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/08/removing-myanmar-officials/;
Miles, supra note 9.
70.
See Removing Myanmar Military Officials from Facebook, supra note 69.
71.
Detailed Findings of the FFM, supra note 7, ¶ 1329, n.2942.
72.
Id. ¶ 1329.
73.
Id.
74.
Id.
75.
See, e.g., id. ¶ 1340 (discussing how the State Counsellor’s Information
Committee dismissed the allegations of sexual violence against the
Rohingya as “fake rape”). See also id. ¶¶ 757 n.1619, 801 n.1762, 836
n.1850, 846 n.1891, 857 n.1917, 866 n.1933.
156