In August 2017, the Myanmar security forces undertook a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims. Hundreds of thousands fled across the border to seek refuge in Bangladesh.
In a 2022 report, Amnesty International alleged that Facebook owner Meta substantially contributed to the atrocities suffered by Rohingya people by proactively amplifying harmful anti-Rohingya content in Myanmar in 2017.
Umme Salma, a Rohingya activist — a 13-year-old schoolgirl in 2017— was among them. She lived in Kutupalong refugee camp in southern Bangladesh, where she actively advocated for the Rohingya’s right to education.
Now, the 20-year-old is studying International Development at Fanshawe College in Canada.
Meta is currently facing at least three active requests seeking remediation for the Rohingya. Refugee groups in Cox’s Bazar have also made direct requests to Meta to remediate them by funding a USD $1 million education project in the refugee camps. Following Meta’s alleged failure to provide any effective remedy and refusing the community’s request to fund children schools in the camps, a group of Rohingya refugees, including Umme, filed a complaint against the company under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises via the Irish National Contact Point (NCP), with the help of Victim Advocates International (VAI).
As Meta is domiciled in the United States, the complaint was transferred to the US NCP in June 2022. Since September 2022, the complaint has continued to remain under consideration. Amnesty International is a partner of VAI, supporting Rohingya community groups in their pursuit of justice.
In this essay published to mark the seven-year anniversary of the violence against the Rohingya, Umme talks about growing up in a refugee camp and argues that Meta should provide resources for their education as part of redress efforts.
In 2017, I fled the conflict in Myanmar at the age of 13 and lived in Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh for nearly six years.
Life was difficult for us. We didn’t have enough income. We didn’t have enough space for eight family members. Only two rooms and one kitchen. The World Food Programme (WFP) provided food rations, but it was not enough.
When I was living in the refugee camp, I started an organization called Literature and Handicap for Rohingya Women to help educate women and girls. To help them learn to read and write. To know about human rights, about justice and gender-based violence.
I wanted them to get a source of income. To help them earn money to meet their basic needs. I also used to provide embroidery training and sewing machine training and capacity building training for the women. I just said to myself, ‘I must do something’. That’s how I started the organization.
I also have a passion for photography. I use it to tell others about the plight of the Rohingya. I want the international community to see what’s inside the refugee camps. Since my childhood, I have always wanted to be a journalist. I didn’t follow my dream, but I am following my passion [photography] and at the same time I’m sharing the challenges and the suffering of the Rohingya people in the camps.
This is important for me because people around the world don’t know the Rohingya, they don’t know our culture and they don’t know our challenges. The world should know we have a rich culture and language. It’s time to educate others about our reality.
There is no formal education in the Rohingya camps. My own younger brother and my siblings became uneducated because they did not get a chance to go to school there. No access to education is another way of indirectly killing a generation. Everyone should get a chance to be educated and to show their talent but there’s nothing. When you are educated, you can distinguish between right and wrong. You can see the real world. You can understand what is happening.
Holding Meta to account
In 2017, we suffered a lot in Myanmar from [digital] content that incited violence, hatred and discrimination against the Rohingya.
They could have stopped this from happening on Facebook. They are the ones who handle their social media, and everything going through their platform. If they wanted to, they could have stopped it, they could have raised their voices against the injustice the Rohingya people are going through.
People from Myanmar were spreading hate speech against the Rohingya people in 2017, but Meta was silent. They have a responsibility to the people who suffered in 2017.
Sadly, they did not do enough. I am an eyewitness to what was happening when they allowed hate speech against my community.
I am asking Meta why they are allowing injustice to prevail by failing to provide adequate redress, why they are not assisting the suffering Rohingya people.
At the very least, they should provide a fund for the education of Rohingya refugees, as we asked for as a part of a redress effort.
Seven years later, the Rohingya people are still suffering
The situation is becoming worse day-by-day for the Rohingya people living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. The food rations are low. Medical supplies are running out quickly because of many diseases in the camps.
The situation in Myanmar is also getting worse and the people living in the camps in Bangladesh are worried about people there. The Myanmar government is killing people every day, but the world is not saying anything. It is taking its time to solve the Rohingya crisis, but what is stopping them from educating the Rohingya children who are in the Rohingya camps?
People will suffer more from this situation. I don’t know how much more they will suffer but people are struggling and losing hope and they don’t have a strong feeling that tomorrow will be any better and that tomorrow they will be alive.
Umme Salma
In 2017, the world said we didn’t know enough about the discrimination you are facing from the Myanmar government. Now, the world knows everything about the current situation in Maungdaw and Buthidaung areas of Rakhine State. Rohingya people are being killed by the Arakan Army, an armed group that claims to be fighting on behalf of ethnic Rakhine people.
The remaining people are crying out for protection from the international community, while the Arakan Army has denied the allegations and the world is silent.
It is like a movie that the world is watching. An action movie that is not reality. It’s like people are watching but not seeing what is actually happening.
The Myanmar government is killing people every day and refugees in Bangladesh continue to suffer, but the world is not saying anything. It is time we get some redress to at least help us build a better future, which could start with children in Rohingya camps having adequate access to education.