ZCZC
BFF-33
SRILANKA-FACEBOOK-TREND
Facebook staff to learn Sinhala insults after Sri Lanka riots
COLOMBO, June 7, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Three months after Sri Lanka was rocked
by deadly anti-Muslim riots fuelled by online vitriol, Facebook is training
its staff to identify inflammatory content in the country’s local languages.
The social network has been seeking penance in Sri Lanka after authorities
blocked Facebook in March as incendiary posts by Buddhist hardliners fanned
religious violence that left three people dead and reduced hundreds of
mosques, homes and businesses to ashes.
Until the week-long ban, appeals to Facebook to act against the contagion
of hate speech had been met with deafening silence, at a time when the
California-based tech giant was reeling from unprecedented global scrutiny
over fake news and user privacy.
“We did make mistakes and we were slow,” Facebook spokeswoman Amrit Ahuja
told AFP in Colombo.
The dearth of staff fluent in Sinhala — the language spoken by Sri Lanka’s
largest ethnic group — compounded the issue, with government officials and
activists saying the oversight allowed extremist content to flourish
undetected on the platform.
Ahuja said Facebook was committed to hiring more Sinhala speakers but
declined to say how many were currently employed in Sri Lanka.
“This is the problem we are trying to address with Facebook. They need more
Sinhala resources”, said the island’s telecommunications minister Harin
Fernando.
Since the violence broke out in March, two high-level delegations from the
company have visited Sri Lanka, where ethnic divisions linger after decades
of war, to assure the government of its intent.
Ahuja said Facebook was working with civil society organisations to
familiarise its staff with Sinhala slurs and racist epithets.
Complex local nuances have added to the challenge. The word for “brother”
in Tamil — also an official language in the country — can be a derogatory
term in Sinhala when a slight inflection is used.
– Desperate measures –
Fernando said the decision to impose an island-wide blackout on Facebook —
used by one in three Sri Lankans — was taken as a last resort to prevent an
escalation of violence.
MORE/FI/ 1043 hrs
ZCZC
BFF-34
SRILANKA-FACEBOOK-TREND-2-LAST
Buddhist monks freely shared images of masked men attacking mosques and
urged others to do the same in the weeks before the riots erupted in Kandy.
Sinhala extremists used the social network to recruit rioters and organise
their travel to the troubled area, from where violence later spread.
A meme in Sinhala, which remained online for weeks, urged death to all
Muslims, including children.
A man who reported it to Facebook was told it did not violate “specific
community standards”. In addition to government warnings, Fernando told AFP
that Facebook users lodged thousands of complaints over extremist content,
but were met with silence.
“It was not something that I liked doing. But if we didn’t block Facebook,
the violence would have spread out of control,” he said.
Eventually the army was given special powers to restore order under the
first state of emergency declared in the 21-million-strong nation since the
end of the civil war in 2009.
– ‘Action needed’ –
Ahuja said Facebook has since taken down “hate figures and organisations”
in Sri Lanka including the Bodu Bala Sena, a radical Buddhist outfit that is
blamed for attacks against Muslims in recent years.
Its spokesman Dilantha Withanage complained the group and its leader — the
notorious extremist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara — were being unfairly
targeted.
“We can’t even post a photo of venerable Gnanasara on Facebook,” Withanage
told AFP.
But videos of his sermons can still be seen on the social network. Other
extremists have also slipped through the cracks, activists say, despite
repeated requests to have their accounts removed.
Last year another extremist Buddhist group, Sinhale Jathika Balamuluwa,
urged followers via Facebook Live to storm a UN compound sheltering Rohingya
Muslims. Police had to be called in to protect the refugees from the mob.
Several Facebook pages for the group have been blocked in Sri Lanka but the
same content can be viewed under alternate names, activists say.
“Facebook is only now being held to account over things that since 2013
were evident…(to) us,” said Sanjana Hattotuwa, a researcher who has studied
Islamophobia on Facebook in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka’s Centre for Policy Alternatives said Facebook needed to offer
more than “cookie cutter” pledges to clean up its act.
“The time for promises has passed. Action is what’s needed, and
transparency and accountability,” said Hattotuwa.
BSS/AFP/FI/ 1042 hrs