As Asia pours hate on minority Muslim group, a Facebook selfie campaign tries love

The plight of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority has prompted an outcry from human rights groups and the Dalai Lama. In the country's capital, a group of young people are trying a different tactic.

Love.

A selfie campaign on Facebook is promoting tolerance and friendship amid rising cases of hate speech, discrimination, and communal violence accross the country. With images and simple sentences and poems, the campaign shows that all people from Myanmar are not supportive of the harsh practices of their government toward the minority group.

The Facebook campaign, which launched in April, asked the public to pose for selfies with their friends who belong to a different ethnic groups or religions. The campaign uses the hashtags #myfriend and #friendship_has_no_boundaries. It comes as the world focuses on Asia's indiference toward Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims, who have been treated like illegal immigrants by Myanmar's government and have been driven to dangerous escapes at sea and exploitation in the region's fishing industry.

Since 2012, there have been intermittent clashes between some Buddhists and minority Muslims in central, western, and northern areas of Myanmar, including in Meikhtila in central Myanmar, where the houses of both Buddhist and Muslim communities were burned down and thousands of people were displaced. The most serious communal violence took place in October 2012 in the Rakhine state of western Myanmar, where Rohingya Muslims have been living in refugee camps near the city of Sittwe. 

At the same time, online hate speech and harassment has been widespread on Myanmar's social media, creating an atmosphere intolerance and racism. The antipathy toward the Rohingya is so strong that even the nation's pro-democratic icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, has refused to denouce the persecution.

Below are some photos from the #MyFriend campaign to prove that some people in Myanmar, especially the young, are determined to end hate by showing respect and friendship.

Han Seth Lu, a Muslim, uploads a photo with his Buddhist friend:

Rody Din, a Christian, shares a photo with his Buddhist friend from Thailand:

Su Yadanar Myint, a Muslim, is proud of her friendship with a Sikh:

This story was cross-posted at Global Voices, a community of 1,200 bloggers and reporters worldwide.