The social media platform Wechat has blocked a message from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. In it he criticized a manipulated image of an Australian soldier put on Twitter by the Chinese government.
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China turned down a call by Morrison for an apology after State Department spokesman Zhao Lijian posted a manipulated photo to Twitter on Monday. The image showed an Australian soldier holding a bloody knife to the throat of an Afghan child.
Morrison criticized the ‘false image’ in a message on Wechat. He defended the way Australia handles a war crimes investigation by special forces in Afghanistan and said that Australia would approach “thorny issues” in a transparent manner.
Wechat, which has more than 1 billion users, is Whatsapp’s Chinese counterpart. In 2019, the Australian Prime Minister created an account on the social media platform, which is mainly used in China, to reach the diaspora in Australia. That account now also comes in handy to target the Chinese population directly.
Twisted events
But that message appeared to have been blocked on Wednesday evening, stating that the content violated the rules, including twisting historical events and confusing the public. Tencent, Wechat’s parent company, is not commenting for the time being, the news agency reports Reuters.
The image refers to revelations from Nov. Then the Australian military admitted that their elite unit in Afghanistan had killed at least 39 unarmed prisoners and civilians between 2009 and 2013. Soldiers were incited to kill as a ‘hazing ritual’. They kept scores and placed guns next to the dead to make it look like a fight.
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