Rohingya sue Facebook for $150bn

Dozens of Rohingya refugees in the UK and US have sued Facebook, accusing the social media giant of allowing hate speech against them to spread.

They are demanding more than $150bn in compensation, claiming Facebook’s platforms promoted violence against the persecuted minority.

An estimated 10,000 Rohingya Muslims were killed during a military crackdown in Buddhist-majority Myanmar in 2017.

Facebook, now called Meta, did not immediately respond to the allegations.

The company is accused of allowing “the dissemination of hateful and dangerous misinformation to continue for years”.

In the UK, a British law firm representing some of the refugees has written a letter to Facebook to this end.

In the US, lawyers filed a legal complaint against Facebook in San Francisco, accusing it of being “willing to trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration in a small country in Southeast Asia.”

Facebook admitted in 2018 that it had not done enough to prevent the incitement of violence and hate speech against the Rohingya.

In 2017, the Myanmar military launched a violent crackdown in Rakhine state of Myanmar after Rohingya militants carried out deadly attacks on police posts._BBC