YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar’s hardline monks will dodge bans on Facebook and keep using the social media giant to “tell the truth”, they said on Friday, after it barred several Buddhist nationalists for hate messages targeting Rohingya Muslims.

United Nations officials investigating a possible genocide in Myanmar have said Facebook had been a source of propaganda against the minority in a country where it has become a near-ubiquitous communications tool as the economy opens up.

Myanmar’s nationalist monks and activists, who have emerged as a political force in recent years, have been sharing violent and angry rhetoric on Facebook targeting the minority, seen by many in the Buddhist-majority country as illegal immigrants.

“It is a violation of freedom of expression,” Thuseitta, a member of the Patriotic Myanmar Monks’ Union told Reuters hours after Facebook identified him as a “hate figure”.

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