Twitter has locked the account of the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. on the grounds that earlier tweets from the account about Xinjiang violated Twitter’s ban on “dehumanizing” content.
A day earlier, the Trump administration announced on Jan. 19, its last day in office, that it had found the Chinese Communist Party guilty of genocide and Crimes Against Humanity against the Uighur people in Xinjiang. Blinken, Biden‘s choice for secretary of state in the new administration, also said he agreed with the decision.
In response to media inquiries, a Twitter spokeswoman said in a statement on Jan. 20 (U.S. Time), “We took action in response to the tweets you mentioned because they violated our rule against “dehumanizing” content,” the Voice of America reported. This provision says: “We prohibit dehumanizing acts against an ethnic group based on religion, caste, age, disability and illness, national origin, and race.”
The Chinese Embassy in the U.S. sent out several tweets earlier this month through its Twitter account claiming that the Chinese government’s efforts had greatly improved the living and working conditions of the Uyghur people, including a Jan. 7 tweet claiming that Uyghur women had been liberated from being baby-making machines. This one tweet generated a large negative reaction and was later deleted by Twitter.
It is unclear exactly when Twitter locked the Chinese embassy’s Twitter account, but after Jan. 9, the account, which had nearly 80,000 followers and had been quite active, did not show any new content.
Reuters reported that the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. did not respond to media inquiries about the lockdown of its Twitter account. Twitter is blocked in China, but Chinese officials and official media are increasingly using it as a tool for foreign propaganda.
Washington, D.C., was the scene of a deadly riot on Jan. 6 when some supporters of then-President Donald Trump broke into the Capitol building. After that, Twitter locked, and later completely cancelled, Trump’s Twitter account, which has 88 million followers.
Many criticized at the time that Twitter blocked President Trump but allowed the Chinese Communist government’s Twitter account to keep spreading false information.
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