FB shuts down army’s page day after deadly violence in Myanmar

YANGON: A Facebook page run by the Myanmar junta’s “True News” information service was kicked off the social media website on Sunday after the tech giant accused it of inciting violence.

Security forces in the country have steadily increased violence against a massive and largely peaceful civil disobedience campaign demanding the return of deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Nobel laureate was taken into custody along with her top political allies at the start of the month, but the new regime has insisted it took power lawfully.

It has used Facebook to claim Suu Kyi’s landslide election victory last November was tainted by voter fraud and issue stark warnings to the protest movement -- which is demanding that the army relinquish power.

A spokesperson for Facebook said the Tatmadaw True News Information Team page was removed for “repeated violations of our Community Standards prohibiting incitement of violence and coordinating harm”.

The social media giant has banned hundreds of army-linked pages in recent years after being criticised for its ineffective response to malicious posts in the country.

Much of Myanmar has been in uproar since Suu Kyi’s ouster on February 1, with large street demonstrations seen in major cities and isolated villages alike.

The military has been unable to quell the demonstrations and the civil disobedience campaign, even with a promise of new elections and stern warnings against dissent.

Huge crowds marched on Sunday in a show of defiance after the bloodiest episode of the campaign for democracy the previous day, when security forces fired on protesters, killing two.

Tens of thousands of people massed peacefully in the second city of Mandalay, where Saturday’s killings took place, witnesses said. “They aimed at the heads of unarmed civilians. They aimed at our future,” a young protester told the crowd.

In the main city of Yangon, thousands of mostly young people gathered at different sites to chant slogans. In Myitkyina in the north, people laid flowers for the dead protesters. Big crowds marched in the central towns of Monywa and Bagan, in Dawei and Myeik in the south, Myawaddy in the east and Lashio in the northeast, pictures showed.

The junta has also imposed nightly internet blackouts and banned social media platforms including Facebook in an effort to bring the protest campaign to heel. “The number of people will increase ... We won’t stop,” protester Yin Nyein Hmway said in Yangon.