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Facebook India 's Policy Head should step down, suggest human rights groups
A coalition of civil rights organizations is calling on Ankhi Das, the head of public policy on Facebook in India, to step down in the face of India 's increasing sectary dispute. On Wednesday, the 41 organisations sent an open letter expressing their objections to Mark Zuckerberg citing a growing potential for violence fuelled by Facebook in the world.
Facebook may not be involved in further offline abuse, even less another genocide, but the history of negligence exhibited by the organization is unethical to the point of complicity, write the organizations. [We] write to encourage you to take concrete steps to resolve the prejudice of Facebook India and its inability to counter unsafe material in India.
Signatories include the Global Alliance Against Hatred and Bigotry, Witness, the Council on American-Islamic Affairs, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is working with Facebook to flag hate group profiles.
In the report, the organizations cite a series of violent actions related to Facebook, from the genocide in Myanmar to the recent shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which set a worrying example for the increasing anti-Muslim rhetoric in India. To break this trend, the groups are pushing for the immediate expulsion of Ankhi Das, the Facebook head of public policy fighting India.
The groups also call for the immediate involvement of local human rights organizations and for the ongoing civil rights audit to be removed from the company's office in India and carried out independently from Facebook's headquarters in California.
A long-standing political figure with links to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP), the position of Ankhi Das on Facebook has become a plight for many civil society organisations. In August, Das lodged a criminal lawsuit against a local journalist in the Wall Street Journal. The criminal case was brought by the Committee to Protect Journalists as a possible threat to freedom of the press.
Das' stance is especially important considering the outbreak of religious violence in India, which the signatories say shows the potential for genocide. The letter relates to the North East Delhi Pogrom, in which a militant mob of Hindu nationalists left more than 40 dead. Facebook has been reluctant to mark many Hindu nationalist pages as hate groups for fear of upsetting PM Narendra Modi.
It's about time Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook took anti-Muslim bigotry seriously and updated the way their policies are implemented in Asia and around the world, said Heidi Beirich of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism in a tweet.
Anti-Muslim materials are metastasizing across the platform as Facebook’s own civil right audit proved. Facebook must put an end to this now.
