How Fake News on Facebook Helped Spill a Border Crisis in Europe


BRUZGI, Belarus — After sleeping for more than a week in a cold camp on the border between Belarus and Poland and an unsuccessful raid across the border sprayed with pepper spray and police batons, Mohammad Faraj this month gave up and retired to a cozy New York hotel. Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

But he soon watched with surprise and excitement a video report on Facebook claiming that Poland was about to open its border and urging anyone who wanted to enter the European Union to gather at a gas station near the camp nicknamed by the immigrants. “Forest.”

Mr. Faraj, a 35-year-old Iraqi ethnic Kurd, hastily returned to Iraq. miserable camp He had just left, traveling 190 miles from Minsk to the gas station, just in time for the border opening in early November, which he had heard on Facebook.

The Polish border, of course, remained tightly closed, and Mr. Faraj spent the next 10 days in what he described as “out of a horror movie”.

The European Union, which offers strong support for Poland’s strict attitude towards immigrants, blamed the traumas Belarus’ authoritarian leader Aleksandr G. Lukashenko’s eastern border in recent weeks.

Belarusian authorities have certainly helped fuel the crisis by issuing easy tourist visas to thousands of Iraqis and easing routes to the Polish border.

But social media, especially Facebook, provided vital assistance to Mr. Lukashenko, as an unpredictable accelerator for the hopes and illusions of those who succumbed to the empty promises of online profiteers and charlatans.

Some were in the business for money and promised to get immigrants across the border in exchange for high wages; some enjoyed the attention they saw as online “influencers” for knowledge sharing; others seemed motivated by a genuine desire to help people in pain. There is no evidence to suggest a coordinated campaign by Mr Lukashenko to target immigrants online with false information.

Fake news on Facebook, Mr Faraj said last week. moved from border camp Along with 2,000 other inhabitants of the “forest”, it was transformed into a nearby giant warehouse, a center for immigrants, “pouring mud on our heads and ruining our lives.”

Monika Richter, head of research and analysis at Semantic Visions, an intelligence firm, said that since July, activity in Arabic and Kurdish related to immigration to the EU via Belarus has skyrocketed on Facebook. This followed social media activity related to the crisis.

“Facebook has exacerbated this humanitarian crisis and now you have all these people brought here who have been clearly misled and defrauded,” Ms Richter said.

The smugglers openly shared phone numbers and advertised their services on Facebook, including video references of people who were said to have successfully reached Germany via Belarus and Poland, the researchers said. In one post, a smuggler advertised “day trips from Minsk to Germany just 20km walking distance”. The ride is “not suitable for children due to the cold,” one writer warned in another post on Oct. Another smuggler with the Facebook username “Visa Visa” made trips from Belarus to Germany via Poland. The smuggler said the journey would take 8 to 15 hours, but added a warning: “Don’t call if you’re afraid.”

Last Friday, a wave of excitement swept among the desperate people gathered in the warehouse after reports on social media that it was still possible to enter Europe, despite the bitter experience of many words that turned out to be lies on Facebook – for anyone who wants to, on the Belarus-Poland border and on the other side. paying $7,000 to a guide who claims to know any easy route through crowded Polish soldiers and border guards.

Rekar Hamid, a former math teacher in Iraqi Kurdistan, had paid travel agents in Iraq nearly $10,000 for a “package tour” that was supposed to take him, his wife and young child to Europe, but had them locked up in a warehouse alone. , mocked the latest offer as another scam. “They keep saying the door is open, but look where we are now,” he said, pointing to a crowd of people gathered on the concrete floor.

Musa Hama, another Iraqi Kurd who was stranded in the warehouse, said no amount of fact-checking would stop people from catching the crumbs of hope provided by Facebook. “People are desperate, so they believe everything,” he said.

The stampede of migrants heading to Belarus in hopes of entering the European Union began earlier this year when the authoritarian former Soviet republic loosened its tight visa policies for some countries, notably Iraq. The rest was ostensibly an effort to boost tourism at a time when most Westerners were staying away after a brutal crackdown by Mr. Lukashenko in response to a controversial presidential election.

Sensing a lucrative business opportunity, travel companies in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region began advertising on Facebook and other platforms about visas to Belarus. Smugglers used social media to promote Belarus as an easy back door to Europe.

Since July, Semantic Visions has identified dozens of Facebook groups created to share information about migration routes and used by smugglers to advertise their services. According to Semantic Visions, a special group titled “Migration of the Strong from Belarus to Europe” has grown from 13,600 members at the beginning of September to about 30,000 now. Another group, “Belarus Online” increased from 7,700 members to 23,700 in the same period. In Telegram, a messaging and chat room platform, channels dedicated to Belarus as a route to Europe have also attracted thousands of members.

In a recent report circulating among European Union officials, Semantic Visions concluded that “Social media platforms – Facebook in particular – were used as a de facto market for smuggling into the EU”.

Officially known as Meta after a corporate name change, Facebook said it has banned material that facilitates or promotes human trafficking and is creating teams to monitor and detect material related to the crisis. He added that the company is working with law enforcement and non-governmental organizations to counter the flood of fake news about immigration.

“Smuggling people across international borders is illegal and any ads, posts, pages or groups that provide, facilitate or coordinate this activity are not allowed on Facebook,” the company said in an emailed statement. “We remove this content as soon as we become aware of it.”

But events in Belarus revealed how the company struggled to keep banned material off its platform, particularly in non-English languages, despite similar abuses of Facebook’s services during the European immigration crisis in 2015.

“Facebook does not take its responsibilities seriously, and as a direct result of this, we see helpless people in the cold, in the mud, in the forest in Belarus, in a helpless situation because they believe the false information they have been given. Facebook,” said Jeroen Lenaers, a member of the Dutch European Parliament, who leads the legislature’s committee on immigration.

Regardless of the steps Facebook has taken to delete misleading and potentially dangerous information, people like the Kurdish-German influencer online commonly known as Karwan Rawanduzy. Mr. Rawanduzy is a popular name among those seeking to immigrate to Europe, but his online videos and other reports frequently support bogus stories, such as the claim that Poland will open its border in early November.

Mr. Rawanduzy’s live broadcasts on a Facebook page called Kurdisch News had more than 100,000 followers before being disabled in November after a Kurdish-German influencer said a Polish politician had publicly accused him of helping fuel the crisis. The page also featured videos posted by hungry and cold migrants stranded at the border.

Mr. Rawanduzy, contacted by phone from Hamburg, Germany, said he repeated the information that Poland was being pressured to open the border and was quoted by the German media. He blamed smugglers and countries, including Poland, for the misery of immigrants and said he was only trying to help asylum seekers.

Mr. Rawanduzy, 42, describes himself as an immigration activist and former refugee who left Iraq in 2009, two years after a suicide bombing in Erbil injured him.

Mr. Faraj is still enraged that he followed the advice of Mr. Rawanduzy, commonly known as Karwan, by running from Minsk to the border. Everyone knows him and everyone follows him.” “Karwan scammed us all on Facebook,” he added.

Mr. Rawanduzy, who also owns a restaurant, said of people who were persuaded by his posts that “it’s not for me to feel bad or guilty”. “It’s up to the Iraqi and Kurdish government to feel bad for all the reasons people want to flee.”

Andrew Higgins Reported from Bruzgi, Belarus, Adam Satariano from London and Jane Arraf From Erbil, Iraq. Contributed by reportingSangar Khaleelfrom Erbil, Tongs Froliak from New York and Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin.



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