Facebook’s Ankhi Das Apologises for Her Anti-Muslim Post

Date:

Ankhi Das, Facebook’s public policy director for India.

On August 15, The Wall Street Journal published a story exposing how Das overruled the advice of the support staff to take action against the hateful post of a BJP leader T Raja Singh who had supported violence against the persecuted Rohingya community.

Clarion India

NEW DELHI — Ankhi Das, Facebook’s public policy director for India, who is at the centre of a controversy involving the social media giant and the Bharatiya Janata Party, has apologised to Muslim employees in the company for sharing a hateful post on her Facebook page that called India’s Muslims a “degenerate community” for whom “nothing except purity of religion and implementation of Shariah matter,” Buzzfeed News, a US-based news outlet has reported.

The report quoting Das’s message said: “Dear friends–The intent of my personal Facebook post was not to denigrate Islam. It was to reflect my deep belief in celebrating feminism and civic participation. I value all perspectives I have heard over the past days about how the post was received and, as a result, I have deleted the post. I genuinely regret any hurt it may have caused, including to my Muslim colleagues in the company.”

She had shared the post of a former police officer in 2019 when Muslims rose up against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act that grants citizenship to migrants from neighbouring countries but discriminates against Muslims.

On August 15, The Wall Street Journal published a story exposing how Das overruled the advice of the support staff to take action against the hateful post of a BJP leader T Raja Singh who had supported violence against the persecuted Rohingya community. She convinced the top employees that taking action would disappoint the ruling party and, consequently, would prove detrimental to the business prospects of the social media giant in the country with the largest user base globally.

In comments on Das’s post, some Muslim Facebook employees pushed back and called for Facebook to do better, the report added.

“Thank you for acknowledging that the post was hurtful to the Muslim community. It is a first step in the right direction,” one person was quoted in the report.

“As a company, we now need to do an honest reflection of hate speech and Islamophobia against Muslims on our platform. In a market where public figures like T. Raja Singh engage in blatant hate speech, as well as incite violence, against the Muslim community, we need to do more to protect the vulnerable.”

According to the report, the person also demanded that Facebook designated the Hindu supremacist organisation Bajrang Dal, and others like it, as “dangerous,” which can lead to organisations and individuals being kicked off Facebook platforms.

“As a company, we need to examine what transpired in India more closely not to lay blame but to reform our processes,” said another Muslim Facebook employee. “Laying blame doesn’t do anything, making structural changes does and I feel we owe it to ourselves, our colleagues, our company, our users, and the world to do so as this will help us bring the world closer together and build better communities.”

The comments were in line with sentiments of the internal letter that demand acknowledgement and denouncing of the “anti-Muslim” bigotry and that Muslim staffers be added to the policy team in India. This was first reported by Reuters.

Facebook has been under public backlash in recent years after several reports revealed that the company has not been doing enough to curb the use of platform to spread of anti-Muslim hate. Last year, rights group Avaaz reported that Facebook was used to incite violence and spread hate against Muslims in Assam. Before that, a UN report and investigations by the media exposed how Facebook was used by officials and local politicians in Myanmar to incite genocidal violence against Rohingya Muslims.

theclarionindia
theclarionindiahttps://clarionindia.net
Clarion India - News, Views and Insights about Indian Muslims, Dalits, Minorities, Women and Other Marginalised and Dispossessed Communities.

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