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Two Rohingya refugees moved the Delhi High Court seeking direction to Facebook India Online Services Pvt. Ltd. to monitor and promptly suspend or remove hate speech and harmful content that originates in India from its platform and is directed towards the Rohingya community, both in India and elsewhere.
The plea stated that the presence of Rohingya refugees in India is a highly politicized matter, and as such they are disproportionately targeted with harmful content on Facebook painting the group as a threat to India, often referring to the group as "terrorists", "infiltrators" and exaggerating the numbers of Rohingya that have fled to India. The plea has been moved through Advocate Kawalpreet Kaur stated that the Rohingyas in India live in squalid camps without access to schools, medical facilities, or regular work. There is neither potable water nor a constant supply of water. The plots do not have any proper washrooms for defecation. The Rohingyas do are living under the construction of bamboo and tarpaulin. Besides this, the Rohingyas are under constant threat sometimes physical threats where their slums are set on fire and they become subject to physical violence, plea stated. Therefore, this type of harmful content, painting the Rohingya as a threat that needs to be removed from India, is strikingly similar to the type of content that proliferated on Facebook prior to the 2017 clearance operations against the Rohingya causing grave concerns for the safety of Rohingyas in India. In fact, after this false political propaganda was disseminated there were numerous attacks on Rohingyas in different parts of India. Rohingya slum settlements were burnt in many places and the Rohingyas were rendered destitute, stated the plea. The stateless Muslim Rohingya minority, having fled ethnic cleansing operations in Myanmar in 2017, is particularly vulnerable in India and Bangladesh. Bangladesh currently hosts 1 million Rohingya refugees in congested refugee camps located in Cox's Bazar on the border with Myanmar. The UNHCR reported that India was sheltering approximately 74,600 Rohingya refugees. The "Rohingya issue" is frequently used as a political tool in both countries and as a result, is subject to large amounts of harmful content on Facebook, the plea read. (ANI)
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