Coronavirus: China detains professor who criticized President Xi Jinping
Xu Zhangrun has been detained after publishing an essay in which the professor made critical comments of the Chinese government’s handling of the pandemic. The professor also took a dim view of other government policies.


Chinese authorities on Monday detained a law professor who published articles criticizing President Xi Jinping (above) over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as his undemocratic policies, according to friends of the man.

Xu Zhangrun was seized at his home in suburban Beijing, before being taken away by more than 20 people, one of his friends said on condition of anonymity.

The Chinese regime takes a dim view of negative publicity, particularly if it stems from the nation's heavily censored academic sector.

Read more: Coronavirus: Li Wenliang's death 'a moment of awakening' for China

Xu's detention has been linked to an essay he published in February citing the culture of deception and censorship fostered by President Xi as a reason for the spread of the novel virus.

The Chinese "leader system is itself destroying the structure of governance," Xu wrote in the paper that was published on websites outside of China, adding the chaos in the coronavirus epicentre of Hubei province was down to systemic issues.

Xu said China was "led by one man only, but this man is in the dark and rules tyrannically, with no method for governance, though he is skilled at playing with power, causing the entire country to suffer."

Read more: Hong Kong is being 'robbed of its rights'

He also predicted that an ongoing economic slowdown would cause "the decline of national confidence," along with "political and academic indignation and social atrophy."

It is not the first time Xu has been critical of the government. The law professor at Tsinghua University, one of the country's most renowned institutions, had previously criticized the 2018 abolition of presidential term limits in an essay that was also well-circulated online.

jsi/rc (AFP, ARD)

Brazil prosecutors target minister over Amazon destruction

Ricardo Salles is accused of promoting policies that "violate" his duty to protect the environment. In 2019, wildfires raged through Brazil's Amazon rainforest and experts fear a repeat this year


Brazilian prosecutors on Monday called for the dismissal of the country's environment minister, alleging "countless initiatives that violate the duty to protect the environment."

At the heart of the allegations is that Ricardo Salles, 45, played a fundamental role in increasing deforestation in the Amazon by removing measures designed to protect the rainforest.

The charge sheet also includes "administrative dishonesty," in promoting interests unrelated to his role in government, echoing suggestions from other sectors that claim Salles supported the legalization of mining activities in protected areas.

Read more: As coronavirus and deforestation soar in Brazil, groups take Bolsonaro to court

The minister oversaw a 25% reduction in environmental funding, as well as the freezing of an international financial package to combat deforestation. This in turn "directly contributed" to an upsurge in the permanent removal of trees, according to a statement by 12 public prosecutors.

The prosecutors want Salles' political rights suspended and for him to pay damages, as well as receive a financial penalty for his conduct.

Salles courted controversy recently when he was recorded saying the government should take advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to ease environmental regulations.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has received widespread criticism for his relaxed attitude towards the exploitation of the Amazon forest, as well as a number of other environmental issues. He has frequently made questionable claims about the environment, including last year blaming NGOs for the fires that raged through the Amazon. He provided no evidence to support his claim.

Read more: The rape of Colombia's Indigenous children

Fires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest increased by almost 20% in June, the highest recorded for 13 years for the month.

In 2019 wildfires led to protests within Brazil and elsewhere. And as this year's dry season takes hold, environmentalists have expressed grave concern that 2020 is on track to be the most destructive year ever for the world's biggest rainforest.

The Amazon spans numerous countries in South America, but is 60% in Brazil, and it is a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming.

jsi/rc (AFP, EFE)

Hong Kong: Google, Facebook and Twitter halt user data requests

The social media giants have taken the step after China enacted a controversial new national security law. Opponents fear the law will be used to crack down on dissenting opinions and stifle free speech.


Twitter, Facebook and Google are pausing requests from Hong Kong's authorities seeking user data amid growing concerns over China's controversial new national security law.

Facebook, which also owns popular platforms Whatsapp and Instagram, said it was "pausing" requests from the Hong Kong government and police for all of its services "pending further assessment" of the law, the company said in a statement released Monday.

Google and Twitter suspended reviews of government requests for data after the law went into effect last week.

Twitter cited "grave concerns" about the law's implications.

Popular video clip-sharing app TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, later followed suit, saying that "in light of recent events" it would cease operations in Hong Kong. TikTok has adamantly denied sharing user data with Chinese authorities and said it did not intend to begin honoring such requests.

Zoom, Telegram, and LinkedIn also said they would suspend compliance with data requests.

Users scrub accounts

Beijing says the new law is to clamp down on violent pro-democracy protests that have taken place in Hong Kong since last year.

Under the law secession, terrorism, subversion, and "collusion" with foreign powers are banned and carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

China now has jurisdiction for "serious" security offenses in the semi-autonomous city of Hong Kong.

Google, Twitter and Facebook have continued to operate in Hong Kong, while they are blocked by mainland China's firewall. After the law came into force, many users began scrubbing their social media accounts for any posts that could be deemed sensitive.

'Fundamental human right'

"We believe freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and support the right of people to express themselves without fear for their safety or other repercussions," said Facebook in a statement.

"Twitter cares and is committed to protecting the people using our service and their freedom of expression," Twitter told news agency AFP on its decision.

Google has paused production on any new data requests from Hong Kong authorities and will continue to review the details of the new law, the company said in a statement.

Free speech?

Social networks often apply localized restrictions to posts that violate local laws but not their own rules for acceptable speech. In the second half of 2019, Facebook restricted 394 such pieces of content in Hong Kong ,up from eight in the first half of the year, according to its transparency report.

kp,kmm/stb (AFP, Reuters, AP)

Germany, others would not recognize Israeli annexation

Germany has issued a joint statement with France, Egypt and Jordan saying they would not recognize a unilateral Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory, also warning it would have "consequences" for relations.


The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Egypt and Jordan warned Israel against annexing Palestinian territory in the West Bank following a video conference Tuesday focused on restarting talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

In a joint statement distributed by Germany's Foreign Ministry, the ministers said: "We concur that any annexation of Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 would be a violation of international law and imperil the foundations of the peace process."

"We would not recognize any changes to the 1967 borders that are not agreed by both parties in the conflict. It could also have consequences for the relationship with Israel."

Read more: Trump's Middle East peace plan satisfies no one

Trump's contentious peace plan

Settlement policy is one of the most contentious issues in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most of the international community views Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as illegal — a view that Israel disputes.

A peace plan proposed in January by the administration of US President Donald Trump was criticized by the EU as "departing from" international agreements on the conflict.

Under Trump's plan, Palestinians would lose control of areas currently under Israeli occupation or controlled by settlers though annexation — even though the Palestinians are entitled to these lands by international law.

Read more: The 1967 Six-Day War and its difficult legacy

EU in a diplomatic tangle

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in February that annexation, if implemented, "could not pass unchallenged."

However, the lack of a consensus on a response by EU member states keeps the bloc from specifying what any such challenge would entail.

Read more: German-Israeli relations: What you need to know

Germany, for example, has ruled out economic sanctions in response to annexation and is in a tough spot diplomatically due to its "historic responsibility" for Israel's security.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he told his British counterpart Boris Johnson on Monday that he was committed to implementing Trump's plan.

"Israel is prepared to conduct negotiations on the basis of President Trump's peace plan, which is both creative and realistic, and will not return to the failed formulas of the past," Netanyahu's statement said.

wmr/msh (Reuters, dpa)

Scientists warn new aggressive seaweed is killing Hawaiian coral reefs
A new species of algae is destroying large patches of once-vibrant reef in one of the most remote ocean sanctuaries on earth. Experts have warned that the phenomena could become an ecological and economic 'disaster.'



A recently discovered species of seaweed is attacking large swathes of coral reef northwest of Hawaii and is spreading more rapidly than ever seen before, a group of researchers said on Tuesday.

The study, conducted by the University of Hawaii and others, said the aggressive seaweed species is a "highly destructive seaweed with the potential to overgrow entire reefs."

According to the researchers, the algae easily detaches and rolls across the ocean floor like tumbleweed, covering nearby reefs in thick vegetation, depriving the coral of sunlight, nutrients and space.

"Everything underneath of it was dead … We need to figure out where it's currently found, and what we can do to manage it,'' said Heather Spalding, a biologist and co-author of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The phenomena is causing havoc in the once unspoiled, remote coral reefs in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, a unique nature reserve that stretches more than 2092 kilometers (1,300 miles) north of the main Hawaiian Islands.

Read more: Madagascar: No more fish? We'll farm seaweed instead

'As far as the eye could see'

Government researchers conducting routine inspections of the Pearl and Hermes Atoll in 2016 said they discovered small clusters of seaweed they had never need before.

Fast forward three years, they returned to find algae had taken over massive areas of the reef. In some parts, the algae covered "everything, as far as the eye could see," with seaweed almost 20 centimeters (8 inches) thick.

The researchers also noted that tropical fish and other marine life that typically frequented the area to graze on seaweed were no longer present in the area.

Individual mats of seaweed were as large as several soccer fields, the scientists said, adding that the actual seaweed coverage area is likely to be much larger than documented because they couldn't survey the expansive sites during their short expedition.


The new species of seaweed is attacking large swathes of coral reef northwest of Hawaii.

Read more: Coral reefs rapidly die from marine heatwaves - study

Ecological and economic 'disaster'

The uninhabited Pearl and Hermes Atoll is located in the mid-Pacific, approximately 3,200 kilometers from Asia and North America.

The atoll is in the 1.6 million-square-kilometer Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, one of the world's biggest protected marine environments.

Hawaii's main islands have a number of known invasive seaweeds, but cases in the remote northwest are a rarity.

"We have, not until now, seen a major issue like this where we have a nuisance species that's come in and made such profound changes over a short period of time to the reefs,'' said University of Hawaii Professor Alison Sherwood, chief scientist on the study.

Researchers are still trying to uncover what is behind the phenomena. In other parts of the world, algae blooms often occur because fish that eat the plants have been harvested or forced to relocate as a result of environmental changes. But fishing in the area is prohibited.


Researchers are still trying to uncover what is behind the phenomena.

The study also suggested that the algae could be native, having lived in small, unseen crevices before a change in conditions caused it to bloom.

Officials said that the first step is to ensure anyone studying the seaweed doesn't end up spreading it elsewhere.

"If something like this got back to Waikiki or anywhere in the main Hawaiian Islands it would be an ecological disaster, but also an economic disaster," said Randall Kosaki, the NOAA's Deputy Superintendent of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, to the Associated Press.

"You can imagine what that would do to tourism to have an algae like this overgrowing the reefs," he said.

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Mary Trump’s book accuses President Trump of embracing ‘cheating as a way of life’

MAGGIE HABERMAN AND ALAN FEUER
THE NEW YORK TIMES
PUBLISHED JULY 7, 2020
Open this photo in gallery

In this file photo taken on June 26, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during a meeting in the East Room of the White House, in Washington.MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Mary L. Trump, President Donald Trump’s niece, plans to publish a tell-all family memoir next week, describing how a decades-long history of darkness, dysfunction and brutality turned her uncle into a reckless leader who, according to her publisher, Simon & Schuster, “now threatens the world’s health, economic security and social fabric.”

The book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” depicts a multi-generational saga of greed, betrayal and internecine tension and seeks to explain how Trump’s position in one of New York’s wealthiest and most infamous real estate empires helped him acquire what Mary Trump has referred to as “twisted behaviours” – attributes like seeing other people in “monetary terms” and practising “cheating as a way of life.”

Tell-all book by Mary Trump to be released two weeks early due to ‘extraordinary interest’

Mary Trump, who at 55 has long been estranged from Donald Trump, is the first member of the Trump clan to break ranks with her relatives by writing a book about their secrets. Since late June, her family – led by the president’s younger brother, Robert S. Trump – has been trying to stop the publication of the book, citing a confidentiality agreement that she signed nearly 20 years ago during a dispute over the will of the family patriarch, Fred Trump Sr., the president’s father. But a judge in New York has refused to enjoin Simon & Schuster from releasing the memoir and is expected to soon rule on whether Mary Trump herself violated the confidentiality agreement.

Open this photo in gallery 

This cover image of Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, by Mary L. Trump. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Here are some of the highlights from her manuscript:

CHEATING ON A COLLEGE ENTRANCE TEST

As a high school student in Queens, Mary Trump writes, Donald Trump paid someone to take a precollegiate test, the SAT, on his behalf. The high score the proxy earned for him, she adds, helped the young Donald Trump to later gain admittance as an undergraduate to the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton business school.


Donald Trump has often boasted about attending Wharton, which he has referred to as “the best school in the world” and “super genius stuff.”

SENDING A BROTHER TO THE HOSPITAL ALONE

It has long been part of the Trump family’s lore that the eldest child of Fred Trump Sr., Fred Trump Jr., who was better known as Freddy, was the black sheep of the dynasty. Freddy Trump was a handsome, garrulous man and a heavy drinker who, after a miserable experience working for his father, left his job in real estate to pursue a passion for flying, becoming a pilot for Trans World Airlines.

Donald Trump has often remarked that his brother’s departure from the family business opened space for him to move into and succeed. “For me, it worked very well,” Donald Trump told The New York Times during his presidential campaign about serving under his father. “For Fred, it wasn’t something that was going to work.”

Fred Trump Sr. could be brutal to his namesake, shouting at him once as a group of employees looked on, “Donald is worth ten of you,” Mary Trump writes.

Freddy Trump died in 1981 from an alcohol-induced heart attack when he was 42, and Mary Trump tells the story in her book about how his family sent him to the hospital alone on the night of his death. No one went with him, Mary Trump writes.

Donald Trump, she added, went to see a movie.

”NO PRINCIPLES,” A SISTER SAYS

Even at the start of Donald Trump’s campaign, his sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal appeals court judge, had deep reservations about his fitness for office, Mary Trump writes.

“He’s a clown – this will never happen,” she quotes her aunt as saying during one of their regular lunches in 2015, just after Donald Trump announced that he was running for president.

Maryanne Trump was particularly baffled by support for her brother among evangelical Christians, according to the book.

“The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there,” Mary Trump quotes her aunt as saying. “It’s mind boggling. But that’s all about his base. He has no principles. None!”

DONALD TRUMP, NARCISSIST

Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, asserts that her uncle has all nine clinical criteria for being a narcissist. And yet, she notes, even that label does not capture the full array of the president’s psychological troubles.

“The fact is,” she writes, “Donald’s pathologies are so complex and his behaviours so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neurophysical tests that he’ll never sit for.”

At another point she says: “Donald has been institutionalized for most of his adult life, so there is no way to know how he would thrive, or even survive, on his own in the real world.”

Like other critics of the president, Mary Trump takes issue in the book with the notion that Donald Trump is a strategic thinker who operates according to specific agendas or organizing principles.

“He doesn’t,” she writes. “Donald’s ego has been and is a fragile and inadequate barrier between him and the real world, which, thanks to his father’s money and power, he never had to negotiate by himself.”

Trump a narcissist shaped by bullying father, says niece in memoir

SHE CONFIRMS TRUMP IS A CLINICAL SOCIOPATH

Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

SAUL LOEB AFP/File

New York (AFP)

Donald Trump's niece describes the US president as a lying narcissist who was shaped by his domineering father, according to excerpts of her eagerly anticipated memoir carried in US media Tuesday.

Mary Trump's "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" is due out next week amid a legal battle to stop its publication.

In it, she accuses Trump of "hubris and wilful ignorance" stretching back to his younger days, according to CNN, which has seen a copy.


She writes that Trump developed "twisted behaviors" and saw "cheating as a way of life," according to the New York Times.

Trump alleges that the future US leader cheated on an exam, helping him get into the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton business school, the newspaper reported.

She says her uncle paid someone else to take the precollegiate test when he was a high school student in New York. The Times doesn't say how she knew this.

The 240-page book, out July 14, says Trump is a product of his "sociopath" father Fred Trump, the Washington Post reported.

Mary, a clinical psychologist, says her uncle failed to develop human emotion because his father created an abusive and traumatic homelife.

She says that for the future US leader, "lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was," the Post said.

The memoir is billed as the first unflattering portrayal of Trump by a family insider.

The president's younger brother Robert Trump went to court to try to block publication, arguing that Mary was violating a non-disclosure agreement signed in 2001 after the settlement over her grandfather's estate.

Last week a New York appeals judge ruled that Simon & Schuster is allowed to release the memoir, saying it was "not a party to the agreement."

On Tuesday, White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany described it as "a book of falsehoods," even though she admitted she hadn't seen it.

"It's ridiculous, absurd allegations that have absolute no bearing in truth," McEnany told reporters.

- 'Clown' -

Mary is the son of Fred Trump Jr, Trump's older brother, who died in 1981 from complications related to alcoholism. Fred Trump Sr died in 1999.

She writes that her uncle meets all the clinical criteria for being a narcissist, according to the New York Times.

"Donald's pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neurophysical tests that he'll never sit for," she writes.

The memoir is also due to reveal that Mary was the crucial source for explosive New York Times reporting on Trump's finances, which suggested the billionaire paid little in tax for decades, according to The Daily Beast.

In the book, she quotes her sister Maryanne Trump Barry as "saying he's a clown -- this will never happen," after Trump announced he was running for president.

It is set to be the latest bombshell book to dish dirt on Trump after former aide John Bolton's tome, which describes Trump as corrupt and incompetent, hit shelves last month.

© 2020 AFP

UK set to resume Saudi arms sales despite Yemen concerns

Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

Campaigners say Britain has licensed nearly £5 billion in weapons to the kingdom since its Yemen campaign began in 2015 JUSTIN TALLIS AFP/File

London (AFP)

Britain said on Tuesday it would resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia, halted last year after a UK court ruling over the Gulf kingdom's bombing campaign in neighbouring Yemen.

Weapons exports were stopped in June 2019 after the Court of Appeal ordered the government to clarify how it assesses whether their use in Yemen's civil war breaches international humanitarian law (IHL).

The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and triggered what the United Nations has described as the world's worst existing humanitarian crisis.

However, the British government has concluded Saudi Arabia "has a genuine intent and the capacity to comply with IHL", according to International Trade Secretary Liz Truss, allowing for export licence reviews to restart.

"I have assessed that there is not a clear risk that the export of arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia might be used in the commission of a serious violation of IHL," she said in a written statement to parliament

"The government will now begin the process of clearing the backlog of licence applications for Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners that has built up since 20 June last year."

She said it could take "some months" to complete.

The announcement came just a day after Britain slapped sanctions on 20 Saudis for their suspected roles in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

- 'Morally bankrupt' -

The weapons decision drew immediate criticism from arms control activists, with the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) saying it was considering further legal steps.

"This is a disgraceful and morally bankrupt decision," said Andrew Smith of CAAT.

"The Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and the government itself admits that UK-made arms have played a central role on the bombing.

"We will be considering this new decision with our lawyers, and will be exploring all options available to challenge it."

Government figures analysed by CAAT show that Britain had licensed nearly £5 billion ($6.4 billion) in weapons to the kingdom since its Yemen campaign began in 2015.

In its 2019 ruling, England's Court of Appeal said the government had broken the law by failing to assess properly whether the arms it sells to Riyadh violated its commitments to human rights.

The court ordered the UK to "reconsider the matter" and weigh up future risks.

Truss said it had now "developed a revised methodology" to assess allegations of violations by Saudi forces, and determined past incidents were "isolated".

She said applications would be "carefully assessed" against the Consolidated European Union and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria.

"A licence would not be granted if to do so would be a breach of the Criteria," Truss said.

Russia seeks 15 years jail for Gulag historian

Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

Russian historian Yury Dmitriyev (pictured April 2018), who heads rights group Memorial's branch in Karelia, speaks to the media as he leaves a court following the verdict in his child pornography trial in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk OLGA MALTSEVA AFP/File
Moscow (AFP)

Russian prosecutors demanded Tuesday that a respected Gulag historian be sentenced to 15 years in prison over alleged sexual assault in a case his allies say has been trumped up to silence him.

Yury Dmitriyev, 64, spent decades locating and exhuming mass graves of people killed under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's rule.

Rights groups and supporters including many Russian actors have campaigned against Dmitriyev's years-long prosecution.

Activists say the case against him is an attempt to muzzle the outspoken historian who has called attention to one of the darkest chapters in Russia's history.

Dmitriyev is the head of leading rights group Memorial's branch in Karelia in northwestern Russia.

He was first arrested in late 2016 on child porn charges and spent more than a year in pre-trial detention before being released after calls from prominent figures for him to be freed.

In April 2018, he was acquitted of child pornography charges but in a stunning turnabout he was detained later that year again after a higher court overturned the "not guilty" verdict.

He was charged with alleged sexual assault and detained again.

On Tuesday, Dmitriyev's lawyer Viktor Anufriev said prosecutors in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk demanded that he be sentenced to 15 years in a strict-regime penal colony.

Anufriyev told AFP his client would address court on Wednesday.

The prosecution has claimed the historian sexually abused his adopted daughter, the charges he denies.

Dmitriyev's previous case centred on naked photographs of his then pre-teen adopted daughter Natalya seized during a search of his home after an anonymous tip-off to police.

Dmitriyev is known for helping open the Sandarmokh memorial in a pine forest in Karelia in memory of thousands of victims -- including many foreigners -- murdered in 1937 and 1938.

© 2020 AFP

Facebook ad boycott organizers cite no progress on hate speech


Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

Facebook failed to allay concerns of activists organizing an ad boycott of the leading social network to press for more aggressive action on removing toxic and inflammatory content
Washington (AFP)

Organizers of the Facebook ad boycott vowed Tuesday to continue their campaign, saying the social network's top executives had failed to offer meaningful action on curbing hateful content.

At a virtual meeting that included Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, the #StopHateForProfit coalition leaders "didn't hear anything today to convince us that Zuckerberg and his colleagues are taking action," said Jessica Gonzalez of the activist group Free Press, one of the coalition members.

The meeting took place amid a boycott which has grown to nearly 1,000 advertisers pressing for more aggressive action from Facebook on toxic and inflammatory content which promotes violence and hate.


"I'm deeply disappointed that Facebook still refuses to hold itself accountable to its users, its advertisers and society at large," Gonzalez said in a statement.

"This isn't over. We will continue to expand the boycott until Facebook takes our demands seriously. We won't be distracted by Facebook's spin today or any day."

Sleeping Giants, another activist group involved in the boycott, said it was clear at the meeting that Facebook executives "intend to take no real action to deal with hate and disinformation on their platform."

The boycott has mushroomed to include global brands and small companies joining the effort to pressure Facebook, spurred by the wave of protests calling for social justice and racial equity.

Some of the activists say Facebook should do more to curb disinformation from political leaders including President Donald Trump, and limit his comments which critics say promote violence and divisiveness.

- Sandberg pledges more steps -

Earlier Tuesday, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg pledged further steps to remove toxic and hateful content ahead of the discussions with the boycott organizers, led by the NAACP, Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League.

She added that the Silicon Valley giant will be announcing policy updates as a result of discussions with civil rights activists and its own audit of civil rights practices.

"Facebook has to get better at finding and removing hateful content," Sandberg wrote.

"We are making changes -- not for financial reasons or advertiser pressure, but because it is the right thing to do."

Sandberg said the final report of the independent civil rights audit would be published Wednesday following a two-year review, and that this would be used to guide Facebook policy changes.

"While the audit was planned and most of it carried out long before recent events, its release couldn't come at a more important time," she said.

"While we won't be making every change they call for, we will put more of their proposals into practice soon."

The boycott organizers are seeking a top level executive to evaluate "products and policies for discrimination, bias, and hate," as well as independent audits of "identity-based hate and misinformation."

Gonzalez said Facebook should take responsibility for the promotion of violence on the platform including the massacres of Rohingya people in Myanmar, and mass killings which were promoted or streamed on Facebook.

© 2020 AFP