Twitter locks U.S. embassy in China over Uyghur tweet



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The Twitter app loads onto an iPhone in this illustrative photograph taken in Los Angeles, California.

Mike Blake | Reuters

Twitter said it locked down the account of the Chinese Embassy in the United States on a tweet about Uyghur women who violated the company’s policy against dehumanization.

Chinese Embassy account @ChineseEmbinUS tweeted this month that Uyghur women have been emancipated by government policy from being ‘baby-making machines’. The tweet cites a study reported by the state-controlled newspaper China Daily, Reuters reported.

“We took action on the Tweet … for violating our anti-dehumanization policy, where it states: We prohibit the dehumanization of a group of people based on their religion, caste, age, disability, serious illness, national origin, race, or ethnicity, ”a Twitter spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.

Uyghurs, a Muslim minority living in western China, have been suppressed by the Chinese government for years, according to the United Nations, the United States and the United Kingdom.

China has repeatedly denied mistreatment of Uyghurs, most recently on Wednesday when its foreign ministry angrily reacted to former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s labeling of Uyghur politics as “genocide” .

Twitter deleted the tweet and replaced it with a tag saying it was no longer available.

A screenshot from the Chinese Embassy’s Twitter account in the United States showing a tweet that was deleted by the social media company.

The social media giant conditions of service states that tweets that violate its policies are hidden and that accounts are locked out or that some functionality is temporarily limited. Users must manually delete the tweets in question if they want the account to be fully restored.

The account of the Chinese Embassy in the United States was last tweeted on January 9.

The Chinese Embassy in the United States did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment emailed out of regular business hours.

Earlier this month, Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account. The company said the decision was made “because of the risk of further incitement to violence.”

Twitter – along with Facebook and Google – is banned in China.



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