Twitter CEO under fire for ignoring Rohingya plight in Myanmar

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has come under fire for promoting Myanmar as a tourist destination without mentioning widespread rights abuses against the Rohingya Muslim minority in the Southeast Asian country.

Dorsey in a recent series of tweets told his 4 million followers he had traveled to northern Myanmar last month for a 10-day silent meditation retreat, before encouraging them to visit.

"Myanmar is an absolutely beautiful country. The people are full of joy and the food is amazing. I visited the cities of Yangon, Mandalay, and Bagan. We visited and meditated at many monasteries around the country," Dorsey tweeted on Sunday.

Dorsey’s tweets included pictures of the barren room where he stayed at a monastery during the retreat, as well as an analysis of his heart rate while meditating. There was no reference to the plight of the Rohingya in any of the tweets.

Critics on Monday accused him of being “tone-deaf” and ignoring the plight of the Muslim Rohingya minority.

Andrew Stroehlein, the European media director of Human Rights Watch, accused the Twitter CEO of ignoring the pain and suffering of Rohingya refugees.

"I'm no expert on meditation, but is it supposed to make you so self-obsessed that you forget to mention you're in a country where the military has committed mass killings & mass rape, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee, in one of today's biggest humanitarian disasters?"

Last year, Myanmar’s armed forces, backed by Buddhist extremist mobs, launched a state-sponsored crackdown against the Muslim community in the western state of Rakhine. Thousands have been killed and over 700,000 have survived by fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh, where they are camped in overcrowded refugee centers in dire living conditions.

Rohingya refugees say soldiers and Buddhist extremists killed families, burned many villages and carried out gang rapes.

The United Nations has already said that the atrocities possibly amount to genocide.

In August, a report by UN investigators found that Myanmar's military had carried out mass killings and gang rapes of the Rohingya with "genocidal intent" and the commander-in-chief and five generals should be prosecuted under international law.

PressTV-US-based law group says Rohingya faced ‘genocide’

The report published by the PILPG concludes that "crimes against humanity, genocide were committed against Rohingya."

That report called for the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo, targeted sanctions and for the suspects to be tried by an ad hoc tribunal or referred to the ICC.

Media reports have recently described how hate speech proliferated on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook at the peak of the military crackdown. In August 2017, hundreds of new Twitter accounts suddenly sprang up in Myanmar.

Many of the tweets on these accounts appeared to be attempts to counter sympathetic portrayals of the Rohingya by human rights activists.

They portrayed the ethnic minority as illegal and unwanted immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh, or "Bengalis."

These and similar tweets could still be found online nearly a year after the crackdown.

PressTV-Facebook used to incite violence in Myanmar: Report

A large proportion of hate speech has been directed towards Rohingya Muslims, the report says.

Last month, Facebook admitted that its social media platform had not done enough to prevent incitement of violence and hate speech in Myanmar.

The 62-page independent report from non-profit organization Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) found that in Myanmar “Facebook has become a means for those seeking to spread hate and cause harm, and posts have been linked to offline violence.”

The Rohingya trace their presence in Rakhine back centuries, but Myanmar denies the Muslims citizenship.

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