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As I see it | Don’t ban pro-China propaganda but allow anti-Asian hate to fester
- Twitter suspended suspected state-sponsored accounts spreading pro-Chinese propaganda during the Winter Olympics
- But a discredited video seeking to cast the spotlight on the Uygur community is still up, and is fuelling anti-Asian hate
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Why you can trust SCMP
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It is well and good that Twitter recently suspended hundreds of suspected state-sponsored accounts used to spread pro-China propaganda during the Beijing Winter Olympics.
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They reportedly depicted a rosy vision of the Games that glossed over controversies involving alleged human rights abuses in China.
But what about taking action when groups and individuals incite hatred by putting out information already proven to be outright fabrications? Such as one that had suggested the torture of ethnic Uygurs by Chinese police.
Last Thursday, Seyit Tümtürk, president and chair of the rights organisation East Turkestan National Assembly posted a video of a blindfolded and handcuffed man with legs spread and tied to a spit that was turning back and forth.
The accompanying comment said: “Neither doner chicken nor lamb roast. One of our innocent East Turkestan brothers who were subjected to the famous Chinese torture of five million Uygurs are in torture camps in China.”
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The video was discredited as far back as February 2019 by the Taiwan FactCheck Center which confirmed the footage was a BDSM-style cosplay by a group of Taiwanese.
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