AFP: Russian social media site VKontakte (VK) has followed Facebook by banning Myanmar’s army chief and a nationalist monk known for stirring up Islamophobia in a country condemned globally for the treatment of its Rohingya Muslims. Facebook blacklisted Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and other top military brass three weeks ago after a damning report by UN investigators called for their prosecution for genocide over the army’s brutal crackdown on the Rohingya. The military head immediately opened up an account on VK, which has a very similar blue and white interface to its Silicon Valley counterpart but is
hosted by Myanmar’s staunch ally Russia. He quickly amassed some 37,000 followers but users Monday were greeted
with a message that the account had been suspended “due to a violation of the
VK terms of service”. VK told AFP that the accounts of Min Aung Hlaing and hardline abbot
Wirathu had been “blocked permanently after receiving many complaints from
users”, adding that it had hired Burmese-speaking moderators to monitor
posts. Wirathu is an influential monk known for his hatred of Islam and the
Rohingya in particular. Facebook disabled his account in January after a string of vitriol
targeting the stateless minority. Last year’s army campaign forced some 700,000 Rohingya to flee over the
border into Bangladesh, with refugees bringing testimony of widespread
murder, rape and arson. Only a hardcore of military supporters appear to have made the switch to
VK from Facebook in the Buddhist-majority country, which only came online
recently after half a century of military rule. Facebook still reigns supreme although it has scrambled in recent months
to show it is taking hate speech seriously after coming under fire for its
slow response to incendiary posts.
The UN envoy to Myanmar lambasted the world’s biggest social network
earlier this year, even saying it had morphed into a “beast”.
The tech giant, which boasts some 18 million accounts in the country of 51
million people, has admitted it has often been too slow to take down
inflammatory posts.
The army chief, who had two Facebook accounts with 1.3 and 2.8 million
followers respectively, often used the site to drum up support for the
military campaign.