Tag Archives: Human rights

We have to talk about Facebook

Something which started off as a comparison site between female students or sometimes described as a Harvard University version of Hot or Not.(a rating site that allows users to rate the attractiveness of photos submitted voluntarily by others.) Back then it was called Face Mash. Has become something that can only be described as a Fascist platform.

Although Facebook was initially meant to connect people it is now lightyears removed from what intended to be.

It appears it is now solely controlled by algorithms and snowflakes. It is no longer a social platform but a media which can act as Judge, Jury and Executioner.

Accounts are being disabled without any specific reason given or any way of appealing the decision. Once THEY have reviewed is the decision is irreversible . But there is no contact details, no phone number you can ring, no email you can send, only a chat option for a support desk. But once an account has been disabled the support desk can also no longer be contacted. So who is this THEY?

They keep referring to their Community Standards but these are very vague. For example a few years ago a terrorist was able to post a mass killing in 2 mosques without any issues on Facebook, it was taken down after a short while but yet he had been able to post it.

Yet when I recently posted a video by Def Leppard, called Love Bites , I could not even post it because it was in breach of their Community standards.

This raises the question who actually determines what is in breach of their so called Community standards , because it appears a mass murder is within their standards but a classic 80s rock song isn’t.

Then there is of course the whole issue relating to the Holocaust. Again Holocaust denial is totally acceptable for Facebook, but highlighting the crimes of Dr Mengele, of which I got praise and thanks for by some Holocaust survivors, is totally unacceptable according these proverbial THEY in Facebook. In fact is was so despicable to them they removed it twice. Yes you read that right twice, I appealed it and I was told they had indeed made a mistake. Just so they could remove it again the following day.

What bothers me most is that I am hearing more and more of these incidents. Last week a friend was banned for an amount of days just because she posted a warning on her timeline telling people that her account had been hacked.

No one is ever made accountable at Facebook. These issues may seem trivial but they are not . This is the definition of freedom of speech as outlined in the UN charter for human rights.

“Freedom of speech is the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, by any means.”

But aside from the denial of freedom of speech and expression. Facebook also denies its users the right to defend themselves because it is only this proverbial THEY in Facebook who have control over your data. They decide what happens to it , not you, They decided what is acceptable, not you.

They are Judge, Jury and executioner pretty much like any other totalitarian regime.

Roger Casement-Irish Hero and the Congo

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Roger Casement was born in Sandycove, County Dublin in September 1864 and raised in Ballycastle County Antrim following the death of his parents..

between 1911 and shortly before his execution for treason, when he was stripped of his knighthood and other honours, was an Irish-born civil servant who worked for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat, and later became a humanitarian activist, Irish nationalist, and poet. Described as the “father of twentieth-century human rights investigations”, he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in Peru. He then made efforts during World War I to gain German military aid for the 1916 Easter Rising that sought to gain Irish independence.

On this day in 1916 he was sentenced to death for his part in the Easter Rising.

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However I will not go in to his involvement in the Easter Rising in this blog, my focus will be on his Congo report known as the Casement report.

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The Casement Report was a 1904 document written  detailing abuses in the Congo Free State

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which was under the private ownership of King Leopold II of Belgium.

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This report was instrumental in Leopold finally relinquishing his private holdings in Africa. Leopold had had ownership of the Congolese state since 1885, granted to him by the Berlin Conference, in which he exploited its natural resources (mostly rubber) for his own private wealth.

For many years prior to the Casement Report there were reports from the Congo alleging widespread abuses and exploitation of the native population. In 1895, the situation was reported to Dr Henry Grattan Guinness (1861–1915), a missionary doctor. He had established the Congo-Balolo Mission in 1889, and was promised action by King Leopold later in 1895, but nothing changed. H. R. Fox-Bourne of the Aborigines’ Protection Society had published Civilisation in Congoland in 1903, and the journalist E. D. Morel also wrote several articles about the Leopoldian government’s behaviour in the Congo Free State.

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On 20 May 1903 a motion by the Liberal Herbert Samuel was debated in the British House of Commons, resulting in this resolution: “.. That the Government of the Congo Free State having, at its inception, guaranteed to the Powers that its Native subjects should be governed with humanity, and that no trading monopoly or privilege should be permitted within its dominions, this House requests His Majesty’s Government to confer with the other Powers, signatories of the Berlin General Act by virtue of which the Congo Free State exists, in order that measures may be adopted to abate the evils prevalent in that State.“

Subsequently, the British consul at Boma in the Congo, the Irishman Roger Casement was instructed by Balfour’s government to investigate. His report was published in 1904, confirmed Morel’s accusations, and had a considerable impact on public opinion.

Casement met and became friends with Morel just before the publication of his report in 1904 and realized that he had found the ally he had sought. Casement convinced Morel to establish an organization for dealing specifically with the Congo question. With Casement’s and Dr. Guinness’s assistance, he set up and ran the Congo Reform Association, which worked to end Leopold’s control of the Congo Free State. Branches of the association were established as far away as the United States.

The Casement Report comprises forty pages of the Parliamentary Papers, to which is appended another twenty pages of individual statements gathered by Casement as Consul, including several detailing grim tales of killings, mutilations, kidnappings and cruel beatings of the native population by soldiers of the Congo Administration of King Leopold. Copies of the Report were sent by the British government to the Belgian government as well as to nations who were signatories to the Berlin Agreement in 1885, under which much of Africa had been partitioned. The British Parliament demanded a meeting of the fourteen signatory powers to review the 1885 Berlin Agreement. The Belgian Parliament, pushed by socialist leader Emile Vandervelde 

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and other critics of the King’s Congolese policy, forced a reluctant Leopold to set up an independent commission of enquiry.

 

Its findings confirmed Casement’s report in every detail. This led to the arrest and punishment of officials who had been responsible for murders during a rubber-collection expedition in 1903 (including one Belgian national who was given a five-year sentence for causing the shooting of at least 122 Congolese natives).