“The obligation to die for Ethiopia belongs to all of us,”
Abiy said in the now-deleted post that called on citizens to mobilise “by
holding any weapon or capacity.”
Abiy is still regularly posting on the platform, where he
has 3.5 million followers. The United States and others have warned Ethiopia
about “dehumanizing rhetoric” after the prime minister in comments in July
described the Tigray forces as “cancer” and “weeds.”
Facebook has removed posts from world leaders before,
although in rare circumstances. Earlier this year, the company deleted a video
from US President Donald Trump in which he peddled false claims about election
fraud following a deadly skirmish at the US Capitol.
Facebook said at the time the video contributed to “the risk
of ongoing violence.” Just last week, the tech platform yanked a live broadcast
from Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro because he made false claims about the
COVID-19 vaccines.
Spokeswoman Cain did not say how Facebook was made aware of
the Ethiopia post, which the Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister made as
Tigray forces took control of key cities over the weekend that put them in
position to move down a major highway toward the capital, Addis Ababa. Alarmed,
Abiy's government this week declared a national state of emergency with
sweeping powers of detention and military conscription. The prime minister
repeated his call to “bury” the Tigray forces in public comments on Wednesday
as he and other officials marked one year of war.
Meanwhile, Ethiopia's highly polarized social media this
week saw a number of high-profile posts targeting ethnic Tigrayans and even
suggesting they be placed in concentration camps.
Thousands of people have been killed in the war between
Ethiopian and allied forces and the Tigray ones who long dominated the national
government before Abiy took office. The United Nations human rights chief said
Wednesday they had received reports of thousands of ethnic Tigrayans being
rounded up for detention in recent months.
Former Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower Frances
Haugen last month singled out Ethiopia as an example of what she called the
platform's “destructive impact” on society.
“My fear is that without action, divisive and extremist
behaviors we see today are only the beginning,” she told the Senate consumer
protection subcommittee. “What we saw in Myanmar and are seeing in Ethiopia are
only the opening chapters of a story so terrifying, no one wants to read the
end of it.”
Meta spokeswoman Cain declined to say how many staffers they
have on the ground in Ethiopia or dedicated to detecting violent speech in
Ethiopia on its platform, but she said the company has the capability to review
posts in Somali, Amharic, Oromo, and Tigrinya. She also said it has a team that
includes people from Ethiopia or who have spent time in the country.
But Berhan Taye, a researcher in digital rights based in
neighboring Kenya who tracks social media on Ethiopia and regularly escalates
questionable posts to the Facebook platform, told the AP last week the platform
wasn't moderating in the Tigrinya language, the language of Tigrayans, as
recently as April.
Overall in Ethiopia, “if you report (posts) on the platform,
it's very highly likely to get no reply at all,” she said. “From the amount we
escalate, and the number of replies we get, that tells you their internal
system is really limited.”
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