GENEVA ¨C Facebook, Twitter and foreign investors need to do more to ensure they support human rights in Myanmar, the U.N. Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee said in a report published on Tuesday.
Myanmar has been trying to woo investors and divert attention from the 730,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled the country since 2017, an exodus that a U.N. inquiry blamed on a military campaign with ¡°genocidal intent.¡±
Facebook said this month that it had banned four groups fighting Myanmar¡¯s military after it was criticized for not doing enough to block content fueling the conflict. But Lee¡¯s report said she was concerned that the army and allied armed groups had not been banned.
¡°Contrary to achieving the stated aim of decreasing tensions, this selective banning may contribute to feelings of inequality by ethnic minorities,¡± Lee said in the report, which she will present to the U.N. Human Rights Council on March 11.
¡°Public institutions linked to the military, its supporters, extremist religious groups, and members of the government continue to proliferate hate speech and misinformation on Facebook,¡± she wrote.
Myanmar denies allegations of mass killings and rape, and says its offensive was a legitimate response to an insurgent threat and that it is welcoming the refugees back.
The report also examined the role of military-run conglomerates in Myanmar¡¯s mining industry. Fresh sanctions should be considered on two military-run conglomerates, the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (UMEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC), it said.
They provided ¡°off-budget financing¡± to the army and were involved in natural-resource extraction, where Lee said she was continuing to receive reports of human rights abuses.
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