India using Facebook to spread ‘anti-Muslim’ hate speech: US-based rights group

• Avaaz’s senior campaigner says Facebook is being used as a megaphone for hate, pointed directly at vulnerable minorities in India's Assam.
• The Muslim minority is facing citizenship issues in Indian state of Assam.

Muslims in Indian state of Assam have already been facing citizenship issues and now a new report claims that Facebook has given free rein to Hindu nationalists' hate speech.

According to the US-based non-profit rights group Avaaz, there has been widespread abuse online against religious and ethnic minorities, especially in particular against Bengali Muslims, who have been labeled 'criminals', 'rapists', 'terrorists', 'pigs' and 'dogs'.

Earlier in August, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — the ruling party in India — had released a controversial national register of citizens that omitted 1.9 million residents, many of them Muslim in the state of Asam.

Alaphia Zoyab, senior campaigner at Avaaz, said in statement, “Facebook is being used as a megaphone for hate, pointed directly at vulnerable minorities in Assam, many of whom could be made stateless within months”.

“Despite the clear and present danger faced by these people, FB is refusing to dedicate the resources required to keep them safe,” he added. Through its inaction, Facebook is complicit in the persecution of some of the world’s most vulnerable people, ” Zoyab added.

The global online advocacy group reported 213 of the “clearest examples of hate speech” to Facebook, but said that the site had removed only 96 of them for breaching its community standards.

The organisation also reported the issue using the Facebook’s reporting tools. The social site’s watchdogs replied with automated messages saying that “this does not breach their community standards”

“Facebook sent us back automated messages saying that this does not breach their community standards, when we reported hate speech posts in Assam using online reporting tools,” Zoyab told Time magazine. “Facebook keeps saying it has a zero tolerance policy toward hate speech, but Assam seems to prove that it’s a one hundred percent failure.”