The Chinese Government’s treatment of the Uyghur population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) is called “genocide”. China’s intervention; said to include mass detention, re-education, forced labor and even sterilization.
Giant social media network Twitter announced that it has banned 2,160 users’ accounts, reinforcing the Chinese Communist Party narratives about the treatment of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang.
Twitter removed thousands of accounts
It is known that the Chinese Government has been persecuting approximately 11 million Uyghur Turks living in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the north-west of China for a long time. The government frequently comes to the fore with its various policies of repression and violence. Twitter removed a total of 2,160 accounts linked to China’s regional and provincial propaganda campaigns. According to the analysis of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), one of Twitter’s research partners, most of the users’ propaganda was produced in a “shameful way”. Twitter explained that 2,048 of its detected accounts reinforce Chinese Communist Party narratives about the treatment of the Uyghur population, and 112 are affiliated with a private company sponsored by the regional government.
ASPI’s analysis showed that 97% of identified accounts had “less than 5” followers and 73% of accounts had “0” followers. Also, 98% of tweets had no likes or retweets, with the rest being disseminated, often supported by Chinese diplomats and officials. Despite the seriousness of the abuses, most of the data analyzed from the campaign was linked to pornography, Korean soap opera content and spam accounts. Analysts stated that they think users are making propaganda by taking over such accounts. The company said in a statement yesterday that it has removed accounts related to these China-linked operations, as well as misinformation campaigns in Tanzania, Mexico, Russia, Uganda and Venezuela.
Twitter has clashed with Chinese officials over human rights issues before, and its account was suspended because the US embassy referred to Uighur women as “baby-making machines.”
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