Twitter yesterday rebuffed Australian calls to remove a Beijing official’s incendiary post targeting Australian troops, as China doubled down on criticism in the face of mounting international condemnation.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian (趙立堅) 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 child holding a sheep, with other body shapes hidden below a large Australian flag.
Zhao’s post seized on the findings of a recent report from a four-year-long official investigation into the conduct of Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan, but included the digitally altered image.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The post came just days after Australian prosecutors launched an investigation into 19 members of the nation’s military over alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.
Twitter said it had marked the post as “sensitive,” but added that comments on topical political issues or “foreign policy saber-rattling” by official government accounts were generally not in violation of its rules.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday had called the post “repugnant,” holding a virtual news conference from quarantine to demand Twitter take it down and China apologize.
He said Beijing should be “totally ashamed” of the “outrageous and disgusting slur” against the Australian armed forces.
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 factually correct, that is not a genuine image, so we have raised that directly with Chinese authorities,” she told reporters.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the post was “unworthy of the diplomatic standards we have the right to expect from a country like China.”
A spokesperson said the image was “insulting for all the countries whose armed forces have been engaged in Afghanistan for the last 20 years.”
In a restrained statement, Kabul said it was “jointly working” with Canberra to investigate the alleged misconduct of Australian troops, adding that both Australia and China were “key players” in maintaining international consensus on peace and development in Afghanistan.
There was further embarrassment for Australia yesterday when the Guardian published an image purporting to show an Australian soldier chugging beer from a dead Taliban fighter’s prosthetic leg.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Canberra accused the Australia government of making too much of the incident and said that local politicians had “misread” the post, perhaps stoking the issue for domestic political purposes.
“The rage and roar of some Australian politicians and media is nothing but misreading of and overreaction to Mr Zhao’s tweet,” the spokesperson said.
Zhao’s post was yesterday pinned to the top of his social media account, and China’s Global Times, known for nationalistic views, wrote in a Twitter post that Australia “can’t even be counted as a paper tiger, it’s only a paper cat.”
Former senior Australian foreign affairs official Richard Maude said there was no end in sight to the rift in the relationship with Beijing, and it was a “pretty lonely and tough battle for a middle power to be in on its own.”
“What we really need is enough countries to be willing to publicly take a stand,” Maude said.
“Multilateralizing pushback against China, where this is possible, might help. It’s a good place to start the China discussion with the incoming [US president-elect Joe] Biden administration, and with Europe,” he said.
“At the moment China’s not really bearing any cost, from their perspective, from leaning on us so hard. It would help us if that cost is a little higher,” Maude said.
Additional reporting by the Guardian
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru, a US$1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent. With China’s demand for agricultural goods and metals from Latin America growing, Xi will participate in the APEC summit in Lima then head to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week, where he will also make a state visit to Brazil. Xi and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte participated on Thursday by video link in the opening
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un renewed his call for a “limitless” expansion of his military nuclear program to counter US-led threats in comments reported yesterday that were his first direct criticism toward Washington since US president-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory on Oct. 6. At a conference with army officials on Friday, Kim condemned the US for updating its nuclear deterrence strategies with South Korea and solidifying three-way military cooperation involving Japan, which he portrayed as an “Asian NATO” that was escalating tensions and instability in the region. Kim also criticized the US over its support of Ukraine against a prolonged Russian invasion.