"Today, we are taking more action in Myanmar, removing a total of 18 Facebook accounts, one Instagram account and 52 Facebook Pages, followed by almost 12 million people," Facebook said in a statement published on its official website.
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Facebook added that the individuals and organizations, whose accounts were being removed, were responsible for human rights violations in Myanmar, which was demonstrated by the evidence provided by the UN independent mission.
"Specifically, we are banning 20 individuals and organizations from Facebook in Myanmar — including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and the military’s Myawady television network… We want to prevent them from using our service to further inflame ethnic and religious tensions," the statement said.
Myanmar's military is accused of committing atrocities against the Muslim Rohingya minority in the state of Rakhine, where the government forces have been having clashes with local insurgents since 2016. The government deployed police and military units in the region, accusing the insurgents of attacking security posts in Rakhine in 2017. The Rohingyas are forced to massively flee their homes for fear of persecution, with the International Organization for Migration saying that a total of 700,000 people have fled to Bangladesh since August 2017.
Earlier in the day, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar said that it had revealed human rights violations committed by Myanmar's military in the country's western state of Rakhine, calling for an investigation into the genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the country's senior military officials.
