Chinese Embassy’s Twitter Account Locked After Post Defends Uyghur Treatment

The suspended Twitter account of President Donald Trump appears on a laptop screen on Jan. 8, 2021. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) U.S. embassy account was locked by Twitter after it defended the regime’s treatment of the Uyghur minority group, contrary to what human rights groups and the State Department have said.

Twitter drew criticism earlier this month for suspending the account of President Donald Trump and other conservatives—but not CCP accounts.

A spokesperson for the San Francisco-based social media firm told Reuters that the embassy’s account violated its policy against “dehumanizing” Uyghurs. The CCP embassy violated the company’s policy for a tweet that said women in Xinjiang, a region located in western China where the CCP is believed to have numerous concentration camps, were “emancipated” and are “no longer baby-making machines.”

“We’ve taken action on the Tweet you referenced for violating our policy against dehumanization, where it states: We prohibit the dehumanization of a group of people based on their religion, caste, age, disability, serious disease, national origin, race, or ethnicity,” a Twitter spokesperson said on Thursday to the Reuters news agency.

The embassy’s tweet made reference to a state-run China Daily article that said, in part, “In the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of [Uighur] women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted.” The China Daily’s advertisements (pdf), notably, have been featured in legacy newspapers such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and more; the NY Times has since removed the China Daily’s advertorials.

A member of the Uyghur American Association rallies in front of the White House after marching from Capitol Hill in Washington, in support of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act which has passed the House and now will go on to the Senate, in Washington on Oct. 1, 2020. Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

The embassy’s tweet in question has since been removed. The account has not tweeted anything since Jan. 9.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Jan. 19 described the Chinese regime’s treatment of Uyghurs as a “genocide,” asserting: “I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uighurs by the Chinese party-state.”

“Since the Allied forces exposed the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, the refrain ‘Never again’ has become the civilized world’s rallying cry against these horrors,” Pompeo added. “The Nuremberg Tribunals at the end of World War II prosecuted perpetrators for crimes against humanity, the same crimes being perpetrated in Xinjiang.”

Pompeo said that over the past four years, the Trump administration has worked to “expose the nature” of the CCP.

The CCP is a “Marxist-Leninist regime that exerts power over the long-suffering Chinese people through brainwashing and brute force,” Pompeo remarked earlier in the week. “While the CCP has always exhibited a profound hostility to all people of faith, we have watched with growing alarm the party’s increasingly repressive treatment of the Uighurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups.”

The State Department under Pompeo also cited the ongoing, 21-year-long persecution of Falun Gong—a form of meditation—as a grave form of repression on behalf of the CCP.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Twitter for comment.