Social media giant Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has censored the School Strike 4 Climate group. The group’s Instagram page was shut down in April after it announced plans for a school strike for West Papua on August 30.
“We were quite excited for about five minutes,” spokesperson Jaromir Pinkas told Green Left. They had commissioned artwork, posted it online and “after about five minutes” the account was banned.
“We haven’t been able to get anything back,” Pinkas said.
Social media promotion had been an important way of building support for the strike, Pinkas said. The group is calling on supporters to spread the word about the action and about West Papua’s struggle for self-determination.
Pinkas believes that Meta’s action is “specifically because [the post was associated with] West Papua”.
The anti-colonial struggle and climate activism are “intrinsically linked, almost to the extent that in a lot of cases they are effectively the same fight”.
This is especially the case in West Papua, “because the destruction of lives and communities is done to facilitate ecological destruction”, in particular mining and logging.
The group has tried to get Meta to reverse its decision, but has been led to believe there is no appeal.
Facebook and Instagram have a long history of censorship. Green Left’s popular Facebook page was unpublished for 10 years in March.
“A lot of people just don’t know about what’s happening in West Papua” including the “ties that Australia has to that,” Pinkas said.
Facebook wants to keep it that way whereas School Strike 4 Climate wants to change that.
[The School Strike for West Papua is on August 30 at 1pm in the Queens Gardens in Magan-djin/Brisbane.]