Facebook has shut down the Myanmar military’s main page over what the social network described as violations of its standards that forbid the incitement of 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 the platform 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 the content targeted the country’s stateless Rohingya Muslim minority, around 750,000 of whom fled into neighbouring Bangladesh after an army crackdown in 2017.
Meanwhile, mass anti-coup demonstrations, continued across Myanmar on Sunday, with Yin Nyein Hmway at the Yangon protest vowing that “the number of people will increase today and we won’t stop”. According to Yin, the protesters “will continue to [fulfill] our goal of democracy”.
