Facebook bans Myanmar army chief over rights abuses

Facebook says it's banning 20 Myanmarese individuals and organizations, including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing -- the commander-in-chief of the nation's 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," Facebook said.

"And we want to prevent them from using our service to further inflame ethnic and religious tensions."

"We're removing a total of 18 Facebook accounts, one Instagram account and 52 Facebook Pages, followed by almost 12 million people. We are preserving data on the accounts and Pages we have removed."

The social media giant announced its decision today, just hours after UN investigators said Myanmar's military carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Muslim Rohingya with "genocidal intent".

They said the commander-in-chief and five generals should be prosecuted for orchestrating the gravest crimes under law.

The civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi has allowed hate speech to thrive, destroyed documents and failed to protect minorities from crimes against humanity and war crimes by the army in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan states, the UN investigators said in a report.

A year ago, government troops led a brutal crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state in response to attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 30 Myanmar police posts and a military base.

Some 700,000 Rohingya fled the crackdown and most are now living in refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh.

Source: Reuters