On December 12, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof published an op-ed in the paper titled “End This Shameful War,” in which he discusses the dire humanitarian crisis happening in Yemen. On Sunday, someone pointed out to him on Twitter that they had been unable to share his article on Facebook.
Why? The article includes a photo (warning: It is disturbing, and appears just below the headline) of a sick, starving 12-year-old Yemeni child named Abrar Ibrahim. In the photo, she is wearing what appears to be a diaper or similar underwear.
According to Kristof, she weighs 28 pounds.
What aspect of this doesn’t work for Facebook? Apparently, her “nudity” violates Facebook’s community standards.
To review what’s going on in Yemen, the country has been suffering through a brutal civil war since 2014. (This stemmed from the Arab Spring revolution in 2011.) Saudi Arabia responded to resistance from Yemen’s Shia Muslims by joining with eight other countries in a coalition. The result? A violent, violent conflict (backed by the U.S.) in which literally hundreds of thousands of children just like Arbar are starving. Think that’s an exaggeration? Yemen’s ports and airports have been closed, so food and medicine can’t enter the country.
As Kristof clarifies in his op-ed, “The parents of starving children allowed photos to be taken because they hope that people outside their country will act differently if they understand the human cost of three years of war.” Notably, the day after the piece went live, the U.S. Senate actually voted to end military support (for Saudi Arabia’s side) of the war.
Now, back to Kristof’s article and Facebook. People on Twitter called out the company, with many speculating that Facebook might have censored the article because of America’s stance on the war. Kristof himself posted to Facebook about the situation:
I’m now hearing from lots of people that you are censoring this photo of a starving Yemeni child that ran with my Thursday column. Yes, indeed, it’s a hard photo to look at. But what’s horrifying isn’t the photo but the reality.
[...]
If Facebook is concerned, then it should help end the U.S.-backed Saudi war in Yemen that has brought 12 million Yemenis to the brink of starvation.
A Facebook spokesperson responded to the Daily Dot with an explanation, including:
“As our Community Standards explain, we don’t allow nude images of children on Facebook. That said, we recognize that people use Facebook to share content that is newsworthy and important to the public interest—those are exactly the types of images that we want to leave on the platform. We undid the mistakes we made on this basis, and people should be able to share Mr. Kristof’s column on Facebook moving forward.”
Yemen’s people are facing a brutal, relentless onslaught. America’s government has been complicit—and many Americans have been in the dark.