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SYDNEY (REUTERS, BLOOMBERG) – Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday (November 30) that Canberra is seeking an apology from Beijing for a tweet containing a false image of an Australian soldier holding the knife to his throat. of an Afghan boy.
Morrison said Australia was seeking to remove the “truly disgusting” image posted on Monday by Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.
The prime minister said the image was tampered with and asked Twitter to remove it.
“It is absolutely outrageous and cannot be justified in any way … The Chinese government should be completely ashamed of this position. It despises them in the eyes of the world,” Morrison told the media at a press conference.
He said countries around the world were watching Beijing respond to tensions in Australia’s relationship with China.
Morrison’s calls for an apology further heighten tensions between the nations, following China’s decision to impose crippling anti-dumping duties on its wine over the weekend.
Diplomatic ties have plummeted this year after Australia called for independent researchers to be allowed into Wuhan to investigate the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, prompting a series of commercial retaliations.
Zhao’s boss later dismissed Morrison’s demand to apologize, asking at a briefing in Beijing whether the Australian leader “lacks a sense of right and wrong.”
“It is the Australian government that should be ashamed that its soldiers kill innocent Afghan civilians,” Hua Chunying, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said when asked about Morrison’s comments.
The image posted by her colleague shows people’s outrage, Ms. Hua said, speaking at a regular press conference in Beijing on Monday. Whether he will be removed is a matter between Twitter and the Australian government, he said.
Ms Hua added that it was the Australian side that should apologize to Afghanistan and denied any link between the tweet and the broader dispute between China and Australia.
“That has nothing to do with other issues between China and Australia, it is a matter of principle,” Ms. Hua said. “There are other problems between China and Australia, but the root cause is that Australia goes against the basic rules of international relations and took wrong action on issues related to China’s fundamental interests.”
Australian special forces soldiers serving in Afghanistan were allegedly involved in 39 illegal killings of prisoners, farmers and other civilians, according to a report commissioned by the government earlier this month.
After a four-year investigation, the report found that there was credible information that 25 staff members may have been complicit and 36 cases should be referred to the police for a criminal investigation.
Zhao, who has more than 175,000 followers on China’s banned social network, has a reputation for sparking diplomatic disputes with provocative posts on Twitter.
In March, he raised a conspiracy theory that the US military may have played a role in the spread of the coronavirus in China, escalating a blame game in which President Donald Trump began referring to the disease as the “Chinese virus.” “.
In his latest tweet, Zhao said he was “shocked by the killing of Afghan civilians and prisoners” by Australian soldiers. “We strongly condemn such acts and hold them accountable,” he said.
The tweet includes an image purporting to show a soldier standing on the Australian flag and holding a bloody knife to the throat of a boy who is grasping a lamb. The child’s face is covered with a blue cloth.
The text below the photo reads: “Fear not, we have come to bring you peace!”
Zhao is closely associated with “wolf warrior” diplomacy, a more controversial approach named after a series of Chinese nationalist action films of the same name.
The Wolf Warriors have come to light amid debates over China’s early efforts to contain the coronavirus and policies to suppress human rights in places like Hong Kong and the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang.
Australia is the most China-dependent developed economy in the world and signed a free trade agreement with Beijing in 2015.
Relations have been strained since 2018, when Canberra banned Huawei Technologies from building its 5G network.
Ties went into free fall earlier this year after Canberra’s call for virus research, a move that hurt China’s pride and sparked a torrent of criticism that Australia is a puppet of America.
China has accused Australia of souring bilateral relations by interfering in its internal affairs, including criticism of Hong Kong’s national security legislation and internment of Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic group living in Xinjiang.
“There are undoubtedly tensions between China and Australia, but that is not how they are handled,” Morrison said of the tweet.
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