Archives for February 2021

EXPLAINER: Why is Facebook banning Myanmar military pages?

Facebook announced Thursday that it is removing all remaining Myanmar military and military-controlled pages from its site and from Instagram, which it also owns.

It said it will also block advertising from military-linked businesses.

The decision follows a Feb. 1 coup in which the military removed elected leaders from power and jailed others. Days after the coup the military temporarily blocked access to Facebook because it was being used to share anti-coup comments and organize protests.

Here’s a look at Facebook’s role in Myanmar and what the banning of the military pages means.

WHAT IS FACEBOOK’S ROLE IN MYANMAR?

For decades Myanmar was one of the least-connected countries in the world, with less than 5% of the population using the internet in 2012, according to the International Telecommunication Union. When telecommunications began to be deregulated by a quasi-civilian government in 2013, the price of SIM cards for cellphones plummeted, opening a new market of users.

Facebook was quick to capitalize on the changes, and soon began to be used by government agencies and shopkeepers alike to communicate.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, had over 22.3 million Facebook users in January 2020, more than 40% of its population, according to social media management platform NapoleonCat. For many in the country, Facebook effectively is the internet.

“The role of Facebook is vital in the country,” said Nickey Diamond, a Myanmar human rights specialist with the group Fortify Rights. “In Myanmar, Facebook is one of the most important communication platforms to the people.”

WHAT ISSUES HAS FACEBOOK FACED IN MYANMAR?

The social media platform has faced accusations of not doing enough to quell hate speech in the country.

In a 2018 report on army-led violence which forced more than 700,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, Marzuki Darusman, head of the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, said Facebook “substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict.” He added, “Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that.”

Under pressure from the U.N. and international human rights groups, Facebook banned about 20 Myanmar military-linked individuals and organizations in 2018, including Commander in Chief Min Aung Hlaing, for involvement in severe human rights violations.

WHY IS FACEBOOK BANNING MORE MILITARY-LINKED PAGES NOW?

After the coup, Facebook said it would reduce distribution of all content from Myanmar’s military, called the Tatmadaw, on its site, while also removing content that violates its community standards, including hate speech.

Facebook announced Thursday that it will ban all remaining Myanmar military-related entities from Facebook and Instagram, as well as ads from military-linked businesses.

“Events since the February 1 coup, including deadly violence, have precipitated a need for this ban. We believe the risks of allowing the Tatmadaw on Facebook and Instagram are too great,” the company said a statement.

The ban covers the air force, the navy, the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Border Affairs, Facebook Policy Communications Manager Amy Sawitta Lefevre said.

Facebook said it will leave up pages contributing to public welfare, including those of the Ministry of Health and Sports and the Ministry of Education.

WHAT IMPACT WILL IT HAVE?

The decision deprives the military of its largest communication platform.

“This is a welcome and long overdue step by Facebook,” Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, said in an emailed statement. “In a country where Facebook has been so incredibly popular, it’s a psychological blow for the military. They have put a lot of resources into using Facebook for propaganda purposes, to recruit soldiers and to raise funds.”

Facebook said it expects the military will attempt to regain a presence on the platform.

“In cases like these, we’re working to be as precise as possible, but we know we may miss some and we’ll keep refining our enforcement,” Lefevre said.

Facebook declined to say how much revenue it expects to forgo from the loss of advertising from military-linked companies.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Israeli plan to share vaccines frozen by legal questions

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial plan to ship surplus coronavirus vaccines to a group of allied nations was frozen Thursday following a legal challenge to the deal, his office announced.

It was the latest twist in a saga that has raised questions at home about Netanyahu’s decision-making authority as well as his move to help far-flung nations in Africa and Latin America at a time when the neighboring Palestinian territories are struggling to secure their own vaccine supplies. The plan has also illustrated how at a time of global shortages, the vaccine has become an asset that can be used for diplomatic gain.

Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that he had personally decided to share small quantities of surplus Israeli vaccines with allied nations. He did not identify the countries, but an Israeli TV station said they included a number of nations that have supported Israel’s claims to the contested city of Jerusalem as its capital.

Netanyahu’s governing partner and rival, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, on Thursday called for a halt in the shipments, saying Israel’s stockpile of vaccines is the property of the state. He attacked the prime minister’s go-it-alone approach and questioned Netanyahu’s claims that there are really excess supplies when Israelis still have not been fully vaccinated.

“This is not the first time that significant defense and diplomatic decisions are being made behind the backs of the relevant bodies, while possibly damaging our national security, our foreign relations, and the rule of law,” Gantz wrote. “This is a pattern which impinges upon our ability to manage the country soundly.”

He demanded the matter be brought before the country’s Security Cabinet for discussions and said he had asked the attorney general for an opinion.

Late Thursday, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said he had received a number of requests to review Netanyahu’s decision. One of those requests, he said, came from Netanyahu’s national security adviser, who told him he had been instructed to “freeze any action on the matter.”

An official in Netanyahu’s office confirmed that the national security adviser had asked for the delay in response to the legal challenge. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk to the media.

Despite the freeze, Israel’s Army radio station reported that one delivery had already landed in Honduras.

Netanyahu, who is up for reelection on March 23, has staked his political success on Israel’s successful vaccination drive, in which about half of the country’s 9.3 million people have been inoculated in just under two months.

Deputy Health Minister Yoav Kisch, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, told army radio that Gantz was jealous “of Netanyahu’s achievements” and said Israel had more than enough vaccines to share with friends. He described the mission as a “strategic and political move at zero cost.”

Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel has hundreds of thousands of surplus vaccines. He said some extras were being shared in response to requests from allies as a mostly symbolic thank-you “in return for things we already have received.”

The revelation was striking because Israel has received widespread international condemnation for sharing only a small fraction of virus-fighting shots with the Palestinians. Israeli this month shared just 2,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine with the Palestinian Authority to immunize front-line medical workers.

“As the occupying power, Israel is responsible for the health of all the people under its control,” tweeted U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. “It is outrageous that Netanyahu would use spare vaccines to reward his foreign allies while so many Palestinians in the occupied territories are still waiting.”

U.N. officials and human rights groups say Israel is an occupying power responsible for the well-being of the Palestinians. Israel says that under interim peace accords from the 1990s it has no such obligations. It notes that it has vaccinated its own Arab population, including Palestinians who live in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

A list obtained by an Israeli TV station included a number of nations that have supported Israel’s claim to Jerusalem, including Honduras, Guatemala and the Czech Republic. African countries with close or budding relations with Israel also appeared, including Chad, Mauritania, Uganda and Kenya.

In his letter, Gantz noted that the decision to share vaccines with the Palestinians was made after consultations involving various government ministries. He said he could not understand why Netanyahu’s latest move was “never broached in relevant forums.”

Gantz and Netanyahu are fierce rivals who battled to stalemates in three consecutive elections before agreeing last year to form an emergency government.

Their power-sharing arrangement was beset by mutual distrust, highlighted by Netanyahu’s moves to reach a number of diplomatic pacts with Arab countries last year without informing Gantz ahead of time.

In December, their coalition collapsed, and the country is heading to its fourth election in two years next month.

Netanyahu’s Likud is projected to be the largest party in parliament after the election, but it is not clear whether he and his hardline allies will control a majority of seats. Gantz’s Blue and White party, meanwhile, has plummeted and is struggling to win the minimum number of votes to remain in parliament.

UK actors settle phone hacking claims with tabloid publisher

LONDON (AP) — British television presenter and writer David Walliams and “Doc Martin” star Martin Clunes were among several actors who formally settled damages Thursday with a newspaper publisher over phone hacking claims.

Walliams, a judge on “Britain’s Got Talent,” and several others including Clunes sued Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of tabloids including the Mirror, for illegally intercepting their voicemails.

Lawyers for Walliams alleged he and his friends were targeted by the publisher from 2003 to 2010, and that 45 news articles were published as a result of intercepted voicemails and other unlawful techniques.

The actor’s lawyer, Roddy Chisholm Batten, told the High Court that Walliams “suffered distress and embarrassment as a result of the misuse of his private information” and that many of the articles were “highly intrusive.”

The publisher had previously admitted wrongdoing and agreed to settle the claims with Walliams, Clunes and other British celebrities.

The cases were formally settled at a High Court hearing Thursday, and the publisher issued a public apology and unspecified compensation to the actors.

GOP rallies solidly against Democrats’ virus relief package

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are closing ranks against Democrats’ proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, even as the White House seemed to rule out a procedural Senate power play to protect one provision most treasured by progressives: a minimum wage hike.

Despite paper-thin congressional majorities, Democratic leaders were poised to push the sweeping package through the House on Friday. They were hoping the Senate, where changes seem likely, would follow quickly enough to have legislation on President Joe Biden’s desk by mid-March.

By early Thursday, not one Republican in either chamber had publicly said he or she would back the legislation. GOP leaders were honing attacks on the package as a job killer that does too little to reopen schools or businesses shuttered for the coronavirus pandemic and that was not only wasteful but also even unscrupulous.

“I haven’t seen a Republican yet that’s found something in there that they agree with,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. “I think all Republicans believe in three simple things: They want a bill that puts us back to work, back to school and back to health. This bill is too costly, too corrupt and too liberal.”

The hardening opposition suggested that Biden’s first major legislative initiative could encounter unanimous GOP opposition. That was a counterpoint to his refrain during his campaign about bringing the country together and a replay of the Republican wall that new President Barack Obama encountered in 2009 and most of his administration.

Democrats showed no signs of backing down against Republican claims that the bill was wasteful, too expensive and not focused enough on key needs like reopening schools.

“This kind of reflexive partisan opposition is not going to wash with the American people. It wouldn’t wash at any time, but it especially doesn’t wash during this time of crisis,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday.

By mid-day, the most suspense was over an anticipated opinion from Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate’s nonpartisan parliamentarian, that could either bolster or potentially kill Democrats’ hopes of using the package to gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 hourly by 2025.

If MacDonough decides the minimum wage provision must come out of the relief package, it would all but kill it because on its own it lacks enough support to overcome a Republican filibuster. It takes 60 votes to halt that tactic and the Senate is divided 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris allowed to cast only tie-breaking votes.

Another alternative would be for Democrats to bust through decades of Senate precedent, ignore the parliamentarian’s view and keep the wage provision in the bill with their 51 votes.

But it is unclear if Democrats could achieve that. Some of their moderates oppose the minimum wage boost or want it dialed back, and others could be reluctant to defy Senate precedents that way.

White House chief of staff Ron Klain seemed to rule that option out when asked directly about that scenario.

“Certainly, that’s not something we would do,” he told MSNBC host Joy Reid on Wednesday night. “We’re going to honor the rules of the Senate and work within that system to get this bill passed.”

Democrats are pushing the overall $1.9 trillion measure through Congress under special rules that will let them avoid a Senate filibuster by Republicans. But those same rules prohibit provisions with only an “incidental” impact on the federal budget because they are chiefly driven by other policy purposes. The parliamentarian decides if provisions pass that test.

If MacDonough decides the minimum wage provision can remain in the bill, it would be a major boost for its proponents. But there would still be no guarantee the measure would survive because of opposition from some Democrats, suggesting that grueling bargaining on its final form would lie ahead.

The minimum wage has stood at $7.25 since 2009. Winning the increase is a top priority for progressives at a time when Democrats control Congress and the White House.

The overall bill would provide millions of Americans with $1,400 direct payments to help them weather the pandemic that’s stalled much of the economy for a year and killed half a million people. It contains billions of dollars for vaccines and COVID-19 testing, schools, state and local governments and emergency jobless benefits while providing tax cuts or payments for many families with children.

In a sign of hardball politics ahead, top Republicans suggested that transportation spending for California and New York had been squeezed into the bill to benefit House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who represents San Francisco, and Schumer.

McCarthy said the bill had $100 million to help extend the San Francisco area’s BART commuter rail system south to San Jose. That project was approved previously by the Trump administration, a top Democratic aide said.

McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., suggested Schumer had won money for a bridge connecting upstate New York to Canada.

Pro-military marchers in Myanmar attack anti-coup protesters

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Supporters of Myanmar’s junta attacked people protesting the military government that took power in a coup, using slingshots, iron rods and knives Thursday to injure several of the demonstrators.

The violence complicates an already intractable standoff between the military and a protest movement that has been staging large rallies daily to demand that Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government be restored to power. She and other politicians were ousted and arrested on Feb. 1 in a takeover that shocked the international community and reversed years of slow progress toward democracy.

In response, several Western countries have imposed or threatened sanctions against the military. On Thursday, Britain announced further measures against members of the ruling junta for “overseeing human rights violations since the coup.”

Amid the international outrage, Facebook also announced it would ban all accounts linked to the military as well as ads from military-controlled companies.

On Thursday, tensions escalated on the streets between anti-coup protesters and supporters of the military. Photos and videos posted on social media showed groups attacking people in downtown Yangon as police stood by without intervening.

The number of injured people and their condition was not immediately clear.

According to accounts and photos posted on social media, hundreds of people marched Thursday in support of the coup. They carried banners in English with the slogans “We Stand With Our Defence Services” and “We Stand With State Administration Council,” which is the official name of the junta.

When the marchers were jeered at by onlookers near the city’s Central Railway station, they responded by firing slingshots and throwing stones at their critics. Some marchers broke away to chase down a man and then stabbed and kicked him.

Supporters of the military have gathered in the streets before, especially in the days immediately before and after the coup, but had not used violence so openly.

Critics of the military charge its pays people to engage in violence, allegations that are hard to verify. They have been raised during earlier spells of unrest, including a failed anti-military uprising in 1988 and an ambush of Suu Kyi’s motorcade in a remote rural area in 2003, when she was seeking to rally her supporters against the military regime then in power.

Such confrontations could make it harder to resolve Myanmar’s crisis.

Later Thursday, police turned out in force in Yangon’s Tarmwe neighborhood where they tried to clear the streets of residents protesting the military’s appointment of a new administrator for one ward. Several arrests were made as people scattered in front of lines of riot police, who used flash bang grenades to disperse the crowd.

So far, according to the independent Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, eight people have been killed in connection with the junta’s crackdown and 728 people have been arrested, charged or sentenced since the coup.

As part of its efforts to quell the opposition, the ruling junta has sought to limit access to the internet, including trying to block Facebook — the gateway to the web for many people in Myanmar. Those efforts have proven largely ineffective.

But on Thursday, Facebook announced a ban of its own: on all military-linked accounts. The social media platform already had deleted several military-linked accounts since the coup, including army-controlled Myawaddy TV and state television broadcaster MRTV. The bans also apply to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

The company said in a statement that it considered the situation in Myanmar an “emergency,” explaining that the ban was triggered by events since the coup, including “deadly violence.”

Facebook and other social media platforms came under enormous criticism in 2017 when right groups said they failed to do enough to stop hate speech against Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority.

The army launched a brutal counterinsurgency operation that year that drove more than 700,000 Rohingya to seek safety in neighboring Bangladesh, where they remain in refugee camps. Myanmar security forces burned down villages, killed civilians and engaged in mass rape, and the International Court of Justice is considering whether these actions constitute genocide.

The military says it took power because last November’s election was marked by widespread voting irregularities, an assertion that was refuted by the state election commission, whose members have since been replaced.

The junta has said it will rule for a year and then hold fresh elections.

Archives for February 2021

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