Daingnet”132 – making no mention of protecting Rohingya civilians. On 11 October, a statement on his Facebook page said it was an “exaggeration to say that the number of Bengalis fleeing to Bangladesh is very large” and that the “native place of the Bengalis is really Bengal. Therefore, they might have fled to the other country with the same language, race and culture as theirs by assuming that they would be safer there.”133 Lower-ranking soldiers also used Facebook to celebrate their military offensive against the Rohingya, often utilizing dehumanizing and discriminatory language. For example, on 26 August 2017, infantryman Sai Sitt Thway Aung posted to his five thousand Facebook followers stating: “One second, one minute, one hour feels like a world for people who are facing the danger of Muslim dogs.”134 Facebook was also used by the Myanmar authorities to disseminate disinformation regarding the military’s actions in relation to the “clearance operations”. In a November 2017 Facebook post, a military investigation team claimed to have found no evidence of wrongdoing by security forces, concluding that “there was no death of innocent people,” and “not a single shot was fired” at women and children fleeing their homes.135 Senior civilian officials in the NLD-led government also frequently posted content on Facebook which sought to justify mass violence against the Rohingya, often in derogatory and dehumanizing terms. After the 25 August 2017 ARSA attacks, the State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s official Facebook page regularly posted graphic photographs of Hindus, ethnic Mro and Rakhine villagers allegedly killed by “extremist Bengali terrorists”, using a slur to describe the Rohingya.136 An investigation published by The New York Times in October 2018 revealed the role of systematic and longrunning military operations in seeking to sow anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya narratives via the Facebook platform. The investigation found that the Myanmar military “were the prime operatives behind a systematic campaign on Facebook that stretched back half a decade and that targeted the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority group”.137 According to the Times’ investigation: “[H]undreds of military personnel… created troll accounts and news and celebrity pages on Facebook and then flooded them with incendiary comments and posts timed for peak viewership”.138 A study by Victoire Rio – a digital rights researcher who has worked extensively with various civil society groups in Myanmar – found that both the Myanmar military and Ma Ba Tha had systematic operations, employing “hundreds” of full-time staff between them, in order to maximize the potential of Facebook to amplify their anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya sentiments.139 Underlining the importance of Facebook to senior military figures, Rio claims: “By the end of 2017, the official page of Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing had over 1.3 million followers, while his office page counted over 2.7 million”.140 Michael (pseudonym), an international aid worker who worked with Rohingya communities in Rakhine State from 2013 to 2019, told Amnesty International about how he became the subject of a viral antiRohingya posts on Facebook during the 2017 atrocities, and received death threats as a result. Michael was evacuated from Maungdaw in Rakhine State during the peak of the 2017 violence. After Michael reached Yangon, he gave an interview about the situation in northern Rakhine State to a local journalist, which went viral on Facebook: “The next day that interview had completely blown up – everyone in my office had seen it already, and there was a lot of hate speech directed at me online.” Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Facebook Posts,1 September 2017, facebook.com/seniorgeneralminaunghlaing/posts/1698274643540350; and 20 September 2017, facebook.com/seniorgeneralminaunghlaing/posts/1716465351721279(both last accessed 12 October 2017), cited in, Amnesty International, My world is finished, p.42. 132 Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Facebook Post, 11 October 2017, facebook.com/seniorgeneralminaunghlaing/posts/1736743383026809(last accessed 12 October 2017), cited in Amnesty International, My world is finished, p.42. 133 134 Cited in Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel, “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination”, Chapter 9, p.181. CINCDS Facebook Post, Information released by the Tatmadaw True News Information Team on the findings of the Investigation Team in connection with the performances of the security troops during the terrorist attacks in Maungtaw region, Rakhine State, 13 November 2017, cited in Amnesty International, “We will destroy everything”, p.21. 135 136 Amnesty International, “We will destroy everything”, p.21. Paul Mozur, “A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military”, The New York Times, 15 October 2018, nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html 137 Paul Mozur, “A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military”, The New York Times, 15 October 2018, cited above. 138 See Victoire Rio, The Role of Social Media in Fomenting Violence: Myanmar, 2020, Toda Peace Institute, Policy Brief No. 78; Paul Mozur, “A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military”, The New York Times, 15 October 2018,cited above. 139 140 Victoire Rio, The Role of Social Media in Fomenting Violence: Myanmar, 2020, Toda Peace Institute, Policy Brief No. 78 THE SOCIAL ATROCITY META AND THE RIGHT TO REMEDY FOR THE ROHINGYA Amnesty International 30