Twitter Allows China to Paint Uighur Concentration Camps as a Victory for Women
UPDATE, Jan. 9, 2021: Following publication of this article, Twitter removed the tweet in question from the Chinese Embassy. This article remains below as published:
Twitter has allowed a Chinese tweet about Uighur women becoming “more confident and independent” in China’s alleged concentration camps in Xinjiang, while continuously censoring President Donald Trump.
“Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines,” a tweet from the Chinese Embassy in US, owned by the Chinese government, read.
“They are more confident and independent.”
The tweet linked to an article by China Daily titled “Education of extremism has given Xinjiang women more autonomy, says report.”
The article claimed that the decrease in birthrate and natural population growth in the region was because of “the eradication of religious extremism” that kept women from deciding whether or not to have children.
The Chinese communist regime has perpetrated abuses against the Uighur in the Xinjiang autonomous region, allegedly persecuting the Muslim minority with forced sterilization and slave labor, according to The Federalist.
The House of Representatives passed bipartisan legislation in September aimed at cracking down U.S. imports of goods suspected to be made with the forced labor of detained ethnic minorities in China, including Muslim Uighurs.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would prohibit importing broad categories of certain goods made with the use of Chinese slave labor, according to The New York Times.
While Twitter has allowed tweets painting the forced detainment of ethnic minorities as a victory for women, it has repeatedly cracked down on Trump’s account.
Following the incursion of the Capitol Wednesday, Twitter removed three tweets and suspended Trump’s account for 12 hours, according to NBC News. Among the tweets that the social media giant decided could not be shown was a video from the president trying to quell the violence at the Capitol.
Facebook and YouTube also took down the video, in which Trump repeated his contention that the election was irreparably marred by fraud and misconduct, with YouTube claiming in a statement that it violated “policies regarding content that alleges widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome.”
Twitter said that if Trump further violates its rules, the company could further suspend the president’s personal Twitter account, which Trump has used as a major vehicle to communicate with his millions of supporters.
On Friday morning, ABC News reporter Ben Gittleson tweeted that the big tech company could permanently suspend Trump’s account.
“A Twitter spokesperson says that ‘any future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account,” Gittleson wrote.
A Twitter spokesperson says that “any future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.”
— Ben Gittleson (@bgittleson) January 8, 2021
As well as deleting tweets from the president, Twitter has also labeled many of Trump’s recent tweets about the election with “disputed claim” labels.
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