Diplomatic Briefing
Your exclusive news aggregator handpicked daily!Archive for September 3, 2022
Newsline: Canada’s embassy in Beijing says its posts were censored on Chinese social media
Canadian Embassy says censors have removed its posts about a United Nations report on human rights in Xinjiang from two Chinese social media platforms. The embassy tweeted that it shared Canada’s response to this week’s report on Weibo and WeChat, but the posts were taken down. The report published Wednesday says China’s treatment of Muslim minorities in western Xinjiang province may constitute crimes against humanity. The Canadian Embassy shared screenshots of what appeared to be postings in Chinese on its Weibo and WeChat accounts. They are word-for-word translations of Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly’s English-language response to the report, saying its findings reflect “credible accounts of grave human rights violations taking place in Xinjiang.” (https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/canadian-embassy-says-its-xinjiang-posts-were-censored-on-chinese-social-media/) The UN report says “urgent attention” is needed from the international community to address the human rights situation in the province.
Newsline: Senegal’s diplomat appointed new U.N. Libya envoy
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has appointed Senegalese diplomat and former government minister Abdoulaye Bathily as his Libya envoy, the U.N. Libya mission said in a statement on Saturday. (https://news.yahoo.com/u-n-libya-envoy-senegals-093814803.html) Bathily succeeds Jan Kubis, who stepped down from the role late last year as diplomacy aimed at resolving Libya’s longstanding conflict faltered in the run-up to an aborted national election.
Newsline: Twitter suspends accounts of seven Serbian embassies, consulate
Serbia said that the Twitter accounts of seven of its embassies and a consulate have been suspended without explanation. ”Official accounts of embassies in Armenia, Iran, Indonesia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Kuwait, as well as the Consulate General in Chicago, were suspended,” the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding the suspensions occurred “without any explanation or prior notice of a possible violation of the social network’s rules.” “Without getting into Twitter’s business policies, we note that it’s unacceptable to censor diplomatic offices of a democratic state that has not been sanctioned in any way,” it added. The ministry said that Serbia finds it “absurd” that a number of its diplomatic and consular offices “were censored on a social network that boasts of promoting democracy and pluralism of opinion.” (https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/twitter-suspends-accounts-of-7-serbian-embassies-consulate/2667129) Serbia has asked Twitter to unblock the accounts.
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