'Avaaz' Reports 213 Incidents of 'Hate Speech' Against Bengali-Muslims in Assam

Guwahati, October 30, 2019:

Rise of hate speech on Facebook targeted at minorities in Assam post-National Register of Citizenships (NRC) publication was reported by a global online advocacy group 'Avaaz'.

According to its report released on Tuesday, the hate speech has seen an upsurge at a time when the Indian government’s biggest exercise in Assam i.e. NRC left out 19 lakh people from its final list.

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The NRC was processed in order to filter out the illegal immigrants in the state.

Posts targeting religious and ethnic minorities in Assam have been seen more than 5.4 million times, according to Avaaz, calling into question the success of the approach taken by Facebook since it was used to spread hate speech during the 2017 Rohingya genocide.

The situation in Assam has drawn comparisons to the Buddhist extremist campaign against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar which peaked in 2017. This forced over 700,000 to flee from their homes.

In Hindu-majority India, Muslims have faced a surge in attacks since the BJP took power. In Assam, some 1.9 million people, many believed to be from the Bengali-speaking minority, are threatened with statelessness as a result of government measures aimed at removing “infiltrators” from the country, said the report.

Bengali Muslims, in particular, seem to be the targets of hate speech on Facebook, according to Avaaz, which found posts on the site calling them “parasites,” “rats” and “rapists,” and calling for them to be exterminated.

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Avaaz's report, which focuses on hate speech in the Assamese language, calls into question whether Facebook’s systems to detect hate speech in languages other than English is working.

Avaaz said it 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 report details one case where one individual inciting hatred against Bengali Muslims had his page removed by Facebook seven times, only to set up new accounts each time and continue posting.

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