Facebook has barred accounts tied to Myanmar‘s navy in addition to military-controlled media accounts from utilizing its platforms, the social media big mentioned on Thursday.
The ban additionally consists of Facebook advertisements from military-controlled corporations and accounts on Instagram.
The firm cited the navy coup earlier this month in addition to the violence towards protesters that adopted as the rationale for the ban.
“Events since the February 1 coup, including deadly violence, have precipitated a need for this ban,” Facebook mentioned in a press release.
“We believe the risks of allowing the Tatmadaw [Myanmar military] on Facebook and Instagram are too great.”
The ban takes impact instantly. It comes days after Facebook blocked pages run by the army-controlled Myawaddy TV and state broadcaster MRTV.
Has Facebook accomplished this earlier than?
In 2018, Facebook banned a number of accounts of the navy high brass, together with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who was on the helm of this month’s coup that ousted the elected authorities of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy occasion.
Hlaing heads the junta that now acts as the federal government.
The junta has additionally made unsuccessful makes an attempt to dam Facebook and different social media platforms.
It has lower entry to the web nightly from 1 a.m., for over every week now.
Facebook and different social media platforms got here below intense criticism in 2017, when human rights activists mentioned that they had did not rein in hate speech towards Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority.
It was the identical yr the navy launched its controversial “counterinsurgency operation” that drove over 700,000 Rohingya to hunt refuge in Bangladesh.
Diplomatic efforts to resolve the disaster
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi on Wednesday held talks along with her Thai counterpart Don Pramudwinai and Myanmar’s new international minister, former military colonel Wunna Maung Lwin, in Thailand.
Indonesia and different members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are searching for to resolve the disaster sparked by the navy takeover in Myanmar. The regional grouping has pushed for dialogue with the junta as a technique to ease tensions moderately than different strategies, akin to making use of sanctions — a method favored by Western nations.
“We asked all parties to exercise restraint and not use violence … to avoid casualties and bloodshed,” Marsudi mentioned in a press convention, stressing the necessity for reconciliation and trust-building.
Protesters sustain strain
Pro-democracy demonstrators, in the meantime, returned to the streets of Yangon and different main cities in Myanmar on Thursday to demand the junta step down and return Suu Kyi’s elected authorities to energy.
A basic strike known as by activists on Monday led to very large rallies, regardless of a warning from authorities that police would use deadly pressure within the case of confrontation.
At least three folks have been shot lifeless in the course of the demonstrations to this point.
The navy authorities says it staged the coup due to voting irregularities within the November’s elections that gave Suu Kyi’s occasion a landslide win. The nationwide election fee has rejected that allegation.
The junta has additionally mentioned that it’s going to rule for a yr below a state of emergency after which maintain contemporary elections.
