Sydney:
Twitter on Tuesday rebuffed Australian calls to take away a Beijing official’s incendiary tweet targeting Australian troops, as China doubled down on criticism in the face of mounting 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 an Afghan child’s throat.
The post came just days immediately after Australian prosecutors launched an investigation into 19 members of the country’s military more than alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan in between 2005 and 2016.
Twitter mentioned it had marked the tweet as “sensitive,” but added that comments on topical political challenges or “foreign policy sabre-rattling” by official government accounts had been commonly not in violation of its guidelines.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had known as the tweet “repugnant”, holding a virtual press conference from quarantine to demand Twitter take it down and China apologise.
He mentioned Beijing really should be “totally ashamed” of the “outrageous and disgusting slur” 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 more than the tweet, like 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 foreign affairs ministry mentioned the post was “unworthy of the diplomatic standards we have the right to expect from a country like China”.
A spokesperson mentioned 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 mentioned it was “jointly working” with Canberra to investigate the alleged misconduct of Australian troops, adding that each Australia and China had been “key players” in keeping international consensus on peace and improvement in Afghanistan.
There was additional embarrassment for Australia on Tuesday when the Guardian published an image purporting to show an Australian soldier chugging beer from a dead Taliban fighter’s prosthetic leg.
‘Horrible atrocities’
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Canberra accused Australia of generating as well significantly of the incident.
“The rage and roar of some Australian politicians and media is nothing but misreading of and overreaction to Mr. Zhao’s tweet,” the spokesperson mentioned.
The embassy recommended Australian officials had been attempting to “deflect public attention from the horrible atrocities by certain Australian soldiers” and “stoke domestic nationalism”.
The diplomatic row has sent relations in between Beijing and Canberra plunging to a new low.
China has imposed a series of financial sanctions on Australian goods in current months, though state-controlled news outlets have repeatedly attacked Australia more than a variety of challenges.
It comes immediately after Canberra started pushing back on Beijing’s developing energy in the area, cracked down on Chinese influence operations Down Under and known as for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
(This story has not been edited by The Spuzz employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)