Twitter locks down the Chinese US Embassy over the Uyghur tweet

Twitter said it locked the account of the Chinese embassy in the United States after a tweet about Uyghur women violating company policies against dehumanization.

The Chinese embassy’s account @ChineseEmbinUS tweeted this month that Uyghur women had been emancipated from “baby machines” by government policy. The tweet cited an investigation by the state-controlled China Daily newspaper, Reuters reported.

“We took action against the Tweet … for violating our policy against dehumanization, which states: We prohibit the dehumanization of a group of people based on their religion, caste, age, disability, serious illness, national origin, race,” or ethnicity, ” a Twitter spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.

The ethnic Uyghurs, a Muslim minority living in western China, have been oppressed by the Chinese government for years, according to the United Nations, the United States and the United Kingdom.

China has repeatedly denied the mistreatment of Uyghurs, most recently on Wednesday when the State Department responded angrily to former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s characterization of Uyghur policies as ‘genocide’.

Twitter removed the tweet and replaced it with a label stating that it was no longer available.

The social media giant Terms of Service that any tweets that violate the policy are hidden and that the accounts are either locked or some features are temporarily limited. Users must manually delete the affected tweets if they want the account to be fully restored.

The Chinese Embassy account in the US last tweeted on Jan. 9.

The Chinese Embassy in the US did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comments sent outside regular business hours.

Earlier this month, Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s account. The company said the decision was made “because of the risk of further incitement to violence.”

Twitter is – along with Facebook and Google – banned in China.