Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying on Thursday (Jan. 14) circulated a fake human rights propaganda piece on U.S. social media Twitter about Xinjiang, denying the Communist Party’s forced labor policy against the Uighur people while accusing the U.S. government of disinformation. In response, a Twitter spokesperson said Friday (15) that the CCP Foreign Ministry tweet did not violate their company rules.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a series of tweets Thursday that the existence of forced labor in Xinjiang “is the biggest lie of the century aimed at limiting and suppressing Chinese authorities and Chinese companies and curbing China’s development.
However, according to a wide range of investigative reports, Communist authorities have increased their crackdown on the Uighur minority in the Xinjiang region over the years. Among the evidence that has come to light are the mass incarceration of some 1 million people, forced re-education programs, highly invasive surveillance, religious repression, forced sterilization of women and forced labor.
The Associated Press has conducted an extensive investigation into this, including first-hand interviews with some 30 former CCP detainees, and found that CCP authorities have subjected thousands of Uighur women to pregnancy tests and forced sterilizations and abortions.
The Chinese Communist regime has been denying the allegations on Twitter, claiming that the sites where the detainees were held were vocational training centers designed to curb religious extremism and prevent terrorism.
One of Hua’s tweets Thursday also accused the U.S. of fabricating lies and using “egregious actions” to violate international trade rules and “harm the interests of global companies and consumers, including the U.S.”
The tweet was accompanied by a propaganda video featuring smiling workers in a Xinjiang factory, spreading the word that “many of our habits have changed and improved. The video is the latest propaganda material from the Chinese regime to whitewash its crackdown in Xinjiang and is far from reality.
The BBC had reported on this misinformation campaign by the Chinese Communist regime after being granted staged access to several Xinjiang detention camps in 2019.
In his report, BBC correspondent John Sudworth wrote, “We were taken to places that had been carefully groomed, as satellite imagery showed that much of the security infrastructure [of the camps] had just recently been torn down.”
He also described the “unchanging smiles” of detainees at the education camp, who stated that they had volunteered for “ideological rehabilitation” and performed choreographed music and dances meant to impress journalists that they had been “extremist-influenced” prisoners and had now been “reborn” at the camp.
Twitter has been limiting content on the platform for years, but recently its censorship practices have raised concerns of double standards.
Twitter shut down President Donald Trump‘s (R-TX) personal account after the violence at the Capitol on June 6, sparking criticism of free speech suppression and exacerbating partisan divisions. The company claimed that Trump incited the violence.
In a tweet on the 13th, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey acknowledged that the decision to block Trump’s account was divisive and set a dangerous precedent.
Newt Gingrich, a Republican and former speaker of Congress, criticized Twitter’s decision to shut down President Trump’s account as hypocritical in his self-published tweet on the 13th.
“Twitter refuses to ban, suspend or delete tweets posted by the Chinese Communist Party despite its apparent ethnic cleansing and violence against Uyghurs.” He said.
Gingrich questioned that Twitter has a different approach to the CCP’s speech standards.
“Twitter can find no reason to ban or censor their [the CCP’s] propaganda of persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang.” He said, “The First Amendment right to free speech is threatened when big tech companies can choose who can speak in public forums and what they can say.”
A Twitter spokesman told Fox News Friday that the Communist Party’s Foreign Ministry denied on Twitter its forced labor policy in Xinjiang while counter-accusing the U.S. of rumor-mongering statements that do not violate their company’s rules.
Communist authorities have banned more than a billion ordinary people from using Twitter, but Foreign Ministry officials, as well as party media figures, appear to be unrestricted.
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