Content area
Full text
Abstract
This Comment examines whether social media companies risk international criminal liability when they provide a platform for direct and public incitement to commit genocide. To answer this question, this Comment makes three findings of law. First, pursuant to the Rome Statute, the Genocide Convention, and caselaw from the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, incitement to genocide is a crime, not a mode of liability. Second, the mens rea for complicity, according to the Rome Statute, is knowledge, if the dime in question is coordinated by a group (for example, a social media campaign to incite genocide). Third, while coporations generally cannotbe subjected to international criminal liability as distinct entities, individuals conducting business on behalf of a coporation are suscptible to liability. This Comment applies the foregoing legal principles to employees at social media companies at various levels of the coporate hierarchy, at times through the example of Facebook in Myanmar. Ultimately, this Comment concludes that individual employees at social media companies may be complicit in incitement to genocide where certain legal requirements are satisfied. This conclusion compels a broader discussion about reforming international criminal law to stem the global propagation of disinformation, where such propagation constitutes incitement to genocide.
I. INTRODUCTION
On August 25, 2017, in the western region of Myanmar known as Rakhine State, a conflict of untold horror-long in the making-spiraled out of control.1 In the day's first hours, a band of Rohingya Islamist insurgents, armed with sticks, knives, and makeshift bombs attacked a series of government outposts.2 The attacks left seventy-one dead, among them fifty-nine Rohingya militants and twelve government officials.3 In response, the Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw, announced the launch of "clearance operations," an all-out assault on thousands of Rohingya civilians.4 The Tatmadaw razed whole villages, killing thousands of people.5 Women and girls were subjected to brutal gang rapes.6 Homes were reduced to ash.7 Altogether, the operations forced more than 745,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.8 According to the U.N., over 600,000 Rohingya remain at "serious risk of genocide" in Myanmar.9
The sheer scale of violence led journalists, human rights organizations, and the U.N. to investigate the Tatmadaw's response to the August 25 incident, including how an entire nation remained...