Facebook’s Role in the Rohingya Crisis. An Approach to Viral Grievances according to Collier and Hoeffler (eBook)

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 1,7, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, language: English, abstract: This paper investigates Facebook’s role in the Rohingya crisis. The term Rohingya is widely used to name the Muslim ethnic minority in Rakhine (also known as Arakan) State, Myanmar. Myanmar, with its prevalently Buddhist population, systematically oppressed the group (for example Rohingyas are denied citizenships, which makes it impossible for the Rohingyas to enjoy the state’s welfare system, etc.).

In respond to this maltreatment, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked several police stations in the Rakhine state in 2017. Myanmar’s armed forces retaliated with atrocities against the Rohingya Muslim minority so fiercely and brutally, that even the extra funded UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar (IIFFMM) reasoned that there was genocidal interest in Myanmar’s so-called anti-terrorist actions. In 2019, more than 900,000 Rohingya refugees were counted in the neighboring Bangladesh. The genocide and other mass atrocities are still on-going.