Rep. Omar sends letter to Zuckerberg about Facebook's role in violence in Ethiopia
(FOX 9) - U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Tuesday about the role his company is playing in the violence in Ethiopia.
Omar says hate speech disseminated on Facebook has likely contributed to the violence in Ethiopia.
“I am writing to express my deep alarm at the role Facebook is playing in the catastrophic violence that has encompassed Ethiopia,” Omar wrote in the letter. “Sometimes genocidal hate speech that is being propagated in many languages by many actors, both inside Ethiopia and abroad, has found a viral audience on your platform, and has almost certainly contributed directly to the massacres of civilians based on their ethnicities.”
The letter also raises concerns that online hate speech also contributed to the violence in Sri Lanka and Myanmar.
“You and Facebook should have learned from past experience,” Omar tells Zuckerberg. The role Facebook played in the 2018 violence against Sri Lankan Muslims prompted a public apology earlier this year. In that crisis, people were killed and beaten, and mosques and Muslim-owned homes and businesses burnt because of hate speech that disseminated on your platform.”
In the letter, Omar addresses the need for Facebook to prevent and monitor the spread of hate speech and violence on its platform.
The letter comes as Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday on their companies’ efforts to control the spread of misinformation, particularly in regards to the 2020 election.
The full text of the congresswoman's letter to Zuckerberg can be found below.
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,
I am writing to express my deep alarm at the role Facebook is playing in the catastrophic violence that has encompassed Ethiopia. Sometimes genocidal hate speech that is being propagated in many languages by many actors, both inside Ethiopia and abroad, has found a viral audience on your platform, and has almost certainly contributed directly to the massacres of civilians based on their ethnicities.
The situation in Ethiopia is precarious and has a very real chance of collapsing into one of the worst human rights and humanitarian crises in the world.
Thousands have already fled across the border to Sudan, which is itself in a deeply fragile transition from dictatorship to democracy. Massacres of civilians because of their ethnicity and religion have become tragically commonplace. The Ethiopian government has jailed dissidents, threatened to bomb civilian areas, and entered into an all-out war with one of its regions. Experts on the region and atrocity crimes are ringing the alarm about the possibility of a massive refugee crisis, continued interethnic violence, and genocide.
You and Facebook should have learned from past experience. The role Facebook played in the 2018 violence against Sri Lankan Muslims prompted a public apology earlier this year. In that crisis, people were killed and beaten, and mosques and Muslim-owned homes and businesses burnt because of hate speech that disseminated on your platform.
Facebook’s part in the genocide against Rohingya people in Burma is also well-documented. Facebook has publicly acknowledged its failure in that case to prevent the fomentation of hate speech and violence.
Alex Warofka said in 2018, regarding the Rohingya, that Facebook “can and should do more” to prevent its use for these brutal ends, but your ongoing contribution to sowing division, hatred, and genocidal violence in Ethiopia makes those words profoundly and disastrously hollow. Instead we have found once again that, when societies become divided to the point of hatred, and when that hatred burns to the point of targeted murder and massacres, there Facebook is in the center of it, as the catalyst and the engine of discord.
In Rwanda in 1994, the orders to murder Tutsis by extremist Hutus bent on genocide were famously issued over the radio. Mr. Zuckerberg, in 2020, you are that radio. It is up to you to turn it off.
Sincerely,
Ilhan Omar
Member of Congress