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SYDNEY: Twitter rejected Australia’s calls on Tuesday (December 1) to remove an incendiary tweet by a Beijing official against Australian troops, as China redoubled criticism of growing international condemnation.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian sparked outrage in Canberra on Monday when he posted a staged image of a man dressed as an Australian soldier holding a bloody knife to the throat of an Afghan boy.
The publication came just days after Australian prosecutors launched an investigation into 19 members of the country’s military for alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.
Twitter said it had marked the tweet as “sensitive,” but added that comments on current political issues or “comments on foreign policy” by official government accounts generally did not violate its rules.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had called the tweet “disgusting”, holding a virtual press conference from quarantine to demand that Twitter remove it and China apologize.
READ: Australia demands apology from China after false image was posted on social media
He said Beijing should be “totally ashamed” of the “scandalous and disgusting insult” against the Australian armed forces.
Twitter is banned for most citizens in China, and Beijing has for decades been accused of widespread human rights abuses.
Some Australian allies expressed concern over the tweet, including New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
“In this case, an image has been used that is not correct in fact, which is not a genuine image, so we have raised it directly with the Chinese authorities,” he told reporters.
The French Foreign Ministry said the position was “unworthy of the diplomatic standards that we have a right to expect from a country like China.”
A spokesman said the image was “an insult to all countries whose armed forces have been involved in Afghanistan for the past 20 years.”
In a moderate statement, Kabul said it was “working together” with Canberra to investigate the alleged misconduct of Australian troops, adding that both Australia and China were “key players” in maintaining the international consensus on peace and development. in Afghanistan.
Australia felt even more shame on Tuesday when The Guardian published a picture purporting to show an Australian soldier drinking beer from the prosthetic leg of a dead Taliban fighter.
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“HORRIBLE ATTRACTIONS”
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Canberra accused Australia of giving too much importance to the incident.
“The anger and roar of some Australian politicians and media is nothing more than a misinterpretation and overreaction to Zhao’s tweet,” the spokesman said.
The embassy suggested that Australian officials were trying to “divert public attention from the horrific atrocities committed by certain Australian soldiers” and “stoke national nationalism.”
READ: Shame and vindication as Australia digests report on Afghan military killings
The diplomatic row has seen relations between Beijing and Canberra fall to a new low.
China has imposed a series of economic sanctions on Australian products in recent months, while the state-controlled media has repeatedly attacked Australia on a number of issues.
READ: Australia faces China in high-risk strategy
It comes after Canberra began to reject Beijing’s growing power in the region, cracked down on Chinese-influenced operations in Australia and called for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
