China says she is ‘victim’ after Twitter locks embassy account on tweet from Xinjiang

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The reply comes after Twitter (TWTR) temporarily locked the Chinese Embassy’s account on a tweet it posted in defense Treatment of Uyghurs by Beijing. The message, released earlier this month, claimed that Uyghur women in Xinjiang were no longer “machines for making babies.”
<< In the process of eradicating extremism, the spirit of [Uyghur] Xinjiang women have been emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health have been promoted, ”the tweet read, citing a report from the state newspaper China Daily.

During a regular briefing in Beijing on Thursday, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry defended the actions of the embassy.

“China is … a major victim. There are a lot of fake and ugly [pieces of] information about China on matters related to Xinjiang. Of course, the Chinese Embassy in the United States has the responsibility and obligation to clarify the facts and explain the truth, “Hua Chunying argued, firing back at Twitter’s “restrictive measures”.

“We hope that Twitter can respect the principle of objectivity and impartiality, not to show double standards on this issue, but to strengthen the filtering and identify what is fake news, what are rumors and lies, and what is fact and truth. “

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The Xinjiang region in China’s far west has long been associated with reports of the forced sterilization of people belonging to the Uyghur minority, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group residing in the region. Chinese officials have denied the allegations.

The United States has officially determined that China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghur Muslims and ethnic and religious minority groups living in Xinjiang.

“This genocide is ongoing and … we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy the Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state,” former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Tuesday, on the last full day of the Trump administration.

News of the Twitter restriction was first reported by Bloomberg.

A Twitter spokesperson said the tweet violated the company’s content policy, which prohibits “the dehumanization of a group of people based on their religion, caste, age, disability, serious illness, national origin , race or ethnicity “.

The tweet is no longer “available” on the platform.

The embassy’s account, meanwhile, will remain locked until the Tweet is deleted, according to Twitter. In similar cases – including one involving former President Donald Trump’s account – Twitter has forced the user to manually delete the post in question before regaining the ability to post.

The Chinese Embassy, ​​for its part, has not tweeted since January 9.

It is not clear if the Embassy intends to delete the message to restore his account. The delegation in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside of normal U.S. business hours.

Twitter and other social media companies have grappled with the consequences of how their platforms can sometimes be used to spread inflammatory speech. Those concerns led several platforms to outright ban Trump earlier this month after inciting a riot on the U.S. Capitol.
In December, the European Commission proposed sweeping new laws on social media monitoring and transparency. The bill would even require platforms to disclose their algorithms for advertising and recommended content.

US law protects social media companies from any liability for what is posted on their platforms. Lawmakers on both sides agree the law must change; they just don’t agree on how.

“I hope there won’t be some kind of overshoot in the measures adopted that will silence the speech or take the wrong approach,” said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization at nonprofit that defends online civil liberties. global efforts to regulate space.

Twitter is one of several US-based social media platforms that are blocked in China, along with Facebook (FB) and Instagram. Despite this, Chinese diplomats and agencies are increasingly using Twitter to promote Beijing’s interests to the world.

– Brian Fung, Scott McLean and the CNN Beijing office contributed to this report.

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