Twitter boss Jack Dorsey panned for ‘tone-deaf’ visit to Myanmar while ignoring plight of Rohingya

The CEO of Twitter has faced fierce criticism for promoting Myanmar as a tourist destination in a series of tweets despite hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing human rights abuses that the UN says amounts to genocide in the country.

Jack Dorsey told his 4 million followers he had travelled to northern Myanmar last month for a 10-day silent meditation retreat, before encouraging them to visit.

“The people are full of joy and the food is amazing,” he said, before encouraging his followers to visit.

But critics accused him of being “tone-deaf” and ignoring the plight of the Muslim Rohingya minority.

Some 700,000 Rohingya refugees fled Myanmar last year, with the country’s military accused of genocide against the ethnic group in Rakhine state in a damning UN report that alleged the army was responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity against minorities across the country.

The UN mission found that the military was “killing indiscriminately, gang-raping women, assaulting children and burning entire villages” in Rakhine, home to the Muslim Rohingya, and in Shan and Kachin. The armed forces of Myanmar, known as the Tatmadaw, also carried out murders, imprisonments, enforced disappearances, torture, rapes and used sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence, persecution and enslavement, while in northern Rakhine, the mission also found evidence of mass extermination and deportation.