‘We won’t apologise for tweet’
China: Australia should be held accountable for its atrocities
BEIJING: The Australian government should formally apologise to the Afghan people for the violent crimes committed against the civilians, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said.
It should make a solemn promise to the international community that such atrocities will never happen again, spokesperson Hua Chunying told a press briefing yesterday.
On Nov 19, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) released the findings of an inquiry that heard testimonies from more than 400 witnesses.
The inquiry found that “credible evidence” proved that specialforces soldiers murdered 39 prisoners, farmers and civilians during the war in Afghanistan.
“It’s all true. It happened. It’s factual. It’s what happened over there, it’s something that I witnessed on a number of occasions,” one of the witnesses, former special-forces medic named Dusty Miller, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
At the regular press briefing on Friday, spokesperson Zhao Lijian was asked to comment on the inquiry.
“We are shocked by the details revealed by relevant reports and strongly condemn such behaviours, which go against international conventions and human conscience.
“We call for a thorough investigation into the matter to bring the culprits to justice,” Zhao said.
He also said that the inquiry fully exposed the hypocrisy of the “human rights” and “freedom” these western countries are always chanting about, and he called on the Australian side to stop using human rights as a pretext to engage in political manipulation.
Zhao, yesterday, wrote a tweet saying: “Shocked by the murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Australian soldiers. We strongly condemn such acts, & call for holding them accountable.”
He posted the message with a graphic image of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of a veiled child who is holding a lamb.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that the image Zhao had posted was “fake” and called the tweet “truly repugnant,” urging the Chinese government to apologize for offending the Australian people and soldiers.
“It is such an over-reaction by the Australian side to my colleague’s tweet,” Hua said.
“Are they trying to say that it is justified for some Australian soldiers to kill innocent Afghan civilians cold-bloodedly but unjustified for us to condemn such ruthless crimes?”
When asked to comment on the handling of the issue, Hua said that the Australian government should be mature and should know how to properly handle this terrible incident.