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Australia China Social Networks The Internet The Military

Australia Demands Apology From China After Fake Image of Soldier Posted On Social Media (theglobeandmail.com) 145

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
hackingbear writes: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded an apology after a senior Chinese official posted a "fake image" of an Australian soldier holding a knife with blood on it to the throat of an Afghan child, calling it "truly repugnant" and demanding it be taken down. The Australian government has asked Twitter to remove the image, posted on Monday by China's foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on his official Twitter account, Morrison said. "It is utterly outrageous and cannot be justified on any basis," Morrison said. "The Chinese government should be utterly ashamed of this post. It diminishes them in the world's eyes."

The image is actually an art work, originally posted on Weibo by online artist Wuhe Qilin, based on the recently uncovered war crimes committed by Australian special forces in the Afghan War. On Friday, Australia has told 13 special forces soldiers they face dismissal in relation to an independent report on alleged unlawful killings in Afghanistan, the head of the country's army said on Friday. "It is the Australian government who should feel ashamed for their soldiers killing innocent Afghan civilians," said Hua Chunying, China's foreign ministry spokeswoman, when asked about Morrison's comments. Wuhe Qilin praised Zhao's re-posting [translation: "Deputy Zhao's strong. Go for it!"] of his work.
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Australia Demands Apology From China After Fake Image of Soldier Posted On Social Media More

Australia Demands Apology From China After Fake Image of Soldier Posted On Social Media

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  • Dictators apologize? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @07:25PM (#60780370) Journal

    ...Good luck with that. At best you'll get the non-committing "we are sorry for the occurrence of a misunderstanding".

  • Chinese elites are allowed to use Twitter? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @07:35PM (#60780390)

    Some pigs are more equal than others, I guess.

    • It's a tool for propaganda at this level. It's about countering noise with noise. Many people in larger cities still use VPNs to get at Twitter too, just to look at models or stupid things Trump says.

    • Re:Chinese elites are allowed to use Twitter? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @08:12PM (#60780502)

      The Great Firewall of China is much less monolithic than westerners often believe.

      The degree of censorship, and what is censored, varies from place to place. Censorship is tightest in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Beijing. But if you go to places like Tianjin or Qongqing where there is little political activism, there is a lighter touch.

      Even in Beijing, you can go to the business center in one of the big hotels, show your passport, and get unrestricted access to the outside world.

  • sad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @07:42PM (#60780426)
    As an Australian I was shocked and appalled with what our special forces have allegedly done. As an Australian I am just as appalled at many Australians attitudes and the hypocrisy of saying how unacceptable it is for China to call this stuff out, we don't hesitate in doing the same to China and we should accept that what has happened is going to result in the same for us even more so as we call out others when we see it occur. The only people I blame for this our the pieces of shit in our special forces that did this.

    • Get spanked "down under" [Re:sad] (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @07:46PM (#60780430) Journal

      Two wrongs don't make a right. If the Chinese gov't tried to pass a fake photo off as a real photo, they've "done wrong", even if there is an indirect element of truth to the image. Perhaps both nations need a good spanking, but for different reasons.

      • China is just getting ready for Taiwan! and they want use images like this to make our Soldiers look bad / try to trun locals agent us

      • Re:Get spanked "down under" [Re:sad] (Score:5, Insightful)

        by enigma32 ( 128601 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @07:57PM (#60780464)

        ^^ This.

        Calling out war crimes is fine (even encouraged). Doing it with fake images is a twist of the truth, and an obvious attempt to sway public opinion in their direction.

        There is nothing hypocritical about asking China to apologize for using fake images in their criticism of another nation-state. Of course, at this point I don't expect the Chinese government to understand anything about truth and honesty. They saw an opportunity to criticize another group that has [rightly] criticized them in the past, and they took advantage of it (all while continuing to ignore serious complaints about their own human rights violations). Shame on them.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

          Yet the "big story" is the fake photo and not the murder of 39 innocent people.

          Claiming a moral equivalency here of "two wrongs" is absurd.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Vomitgod ( 6659552 )

            come to Australia - the murdering of 39 people is in the news - constantly and rightly so.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward
              sadly the 39 innocents murdered (reality is it will be a lot more, those are just the ones they have good evidence of) has definitely taken a backseat in the news as somehow this slight against us is being seen by most as more important.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by martinX ( 672498 )

                What's new is news. The investigation is continuing, with or without front page media coverage.

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • What you're describing re: the "big story" is an issue with the media, not with how nation-states should behave.

            There is no moral equivalency in question. Two wrongs (not one) have occurred. And as someone already pointed out, "two wrongs don't make a right". I'm not sure why so many people here have difficulty understanding that both parties in a dispute can have faults of their own which they should address.

          • Silly Australians, anyway.
            If they'd fought for the US, our President would have pardoned them.

        • Depends wether it's a fake image posing as a real image, or an artwork which depicts a scene and represents a story in a graphical way.

          If you look at the image itself, it is clearly an art work, not a real photo. It's merely a graphical way to represent the current allegations that are going around and under active investigation.

      • The picture is in the article. Did you look? It's easy to tell its a piece of art work.

        • Re: Get spanked "down under" [Re:sad] (Score:4, Insightful)

          by enigma32 ( 128601 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @08:08PM (#60780496)

          It's easy to tell its a piece of art work.

          Maybe Western nations can start using provocative artwork in their official statements about China.

          I like the suggestion, above, about an image with "Winnie butchering a few Uyghur kids". (Seems like a great task for the Reddit crowd...) If Australia posted such an image with an official statement condemning human rights violations in China, do you think that would be acceptable? Let's see how that goes over with Saint Xi.

          • Maybe Western nations can start using provocative artwork in their official statements about China.

            I like the suggestion, above, about an image with "Winnie butchering a few Uyghur kids". (Seems like a great task for the Reddit crowd...) If Australia posted such an image with an official statement condemning human rights violations in China, do you think that would be acceptable? Let's see how that goes over with Saint Xi.

            Are we supposed to have a problem with that? The reason it won't happen is because our "overlords" get too much profit from their dealing with China. The Australian statements on this have been pathetic. 'please please be nice China you don't want to disturb our economic relationship... do you? '

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bert64 ( 520050 )

            There is already plenty of provocative artwork online covering most public figures. You can find all kind of works created using trump's image for instance. The brits even went to the extent of making a giant inflatable baby-trump.

            There are currently allegations of australian soldiers committing war crimes in afghanistan, these allegations are headline news and are being actively investigated. Some people don't want to read through a long article, so a graphic which summarises the story can be useful.

          • Let's see how that goes over with Saint Xi.

            The same way it went over in this case. Australia and China have been engaged in Word War I for decades. All they ever do is get their diplomats to make statements at each other. Nothing ever comes of it. Doctored image online? Send in a diplomat. China starts expanding their region in the south China sea? Send in a diplomat. Australian goes missing in China and is executed? Send in a diplomat. Australia puts a travel ban on Chinese students ... diplomat.

            It's a war played out entirely in the comments sectio

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            That already happens all the time, especially on Twitter. Follow any China related hashtags and they are full of memes like this one.

            That's why they made this image, they are copying what people keep tweeting at them.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by imidan ( 559239 )
          Maybe it was art at one point. Maybe not. Either way, once officials of the Chinese government started republishing it, it became propaganda. The CCP wants Australia under their thumb, and publishing anti-Australian propaganda is part of that. It's like Soviet propaganda about the West during the cold war.

          • What's this "maybe it's art"? Look at it, make a judgement. It's like looking at a Dali painting and going, maybe it's art but either way it's propaganda against time pieces.

            It's also nothing like propaganda from the cold war. It's produced from an individual with a strong photo realism emphasis. Cold War era propaganda is state sponsored. I am in Xining, there is plenty of propaganda and it looks nothing like this.

            It's propaganda in the same way the Bible is because every American president claims to be

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by imidan ( 559239 )

              What's this "maybe it's art"? Look at it, make a judgement.

              I don't care to make a judgment on the artistic merit of the picture. A thing can be propaganda whether it originated as art or not.

              It's also nothing like propaganda from the cold war [...] there is plenty of propaganda and it looks nothing like this.

              Neither the origin of the picture nor its visual style make it propaganda. It's propaganda because (and not only because) it's a state-distributed misleading depiction of an "enemy" power intended to fo

        • How so exactly? Define what makes it art, without a priori knowledge. It's photorealistic, if not an actual photo. It certainly doesn't look stylized or anything, past what a bad set of curves adjustments might do.

          It looks like a photo, staged, CGed, or otherwise. Without context, or with deliberately misleading context, it would not immediately strike a reasonable person as a work of art.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Even the summary points out that it is in fact artwork, not a fake image.

        It's not clear where the claim that it is "fake" came from, but it's not. It's clearly not intended to be real, no reasonable person could mistake it for a real image.

        Whoever lied about it needs a spanking.

    • Is it a big surprise that people despise hypocrites? That's not the same thing as condoning or excusing what's been done, which it seems few if any are doing.

    • Re:sad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rockets84 ( 2047424 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @09:08PM (#60780670)

      Yes what our SAS troops may have done is terrible. But the big difference is the Government is investigating them and will put them on trial. Where's China's investigation of the Tiananmen Square massacre? Where's China admission of how many were actually killed in that incident? Or the ongoing suppression of the Uyghurs? The alleged mass organ harvesting of prisoners, many who were merely imprisoned for being Falun Gong practitioners. The forced abortions on women who dared to have a second child under the one child policy?

      What appalled Australian's is the absolute pure hypocrisy of China's gall to call out Australian war crimes when their own closet is stuffed full of much worse skeletons on a far larger scale that they wilfully ignore. Imagine the outcry from China if any Australian politician tweeted a similar picture taking aim at China. China's is a far too easily offended bully.

      • There is a film on Netflix called "One Child Nation". It's interesting to realize this was recorded in China with Chinese people discussing the policy relatively openly. No one in the film feels it was a good thing but many make it clear there was little choice.

        This is the ultimate debate, is doing a terrible but necessary thing okay? Westerners call it the lesser of two evils. Chinese people generally considered everything you mentioned as terrible but also the lesser evil...

        As for Tiananmen, China lear

      • We must hold ourselves to higher standards precisely so that countries like Russia or China have nothing to get us on. The "free world" committing small scale atrocities are really a lot worse than expected human rights abusers doing things on their scale.

        It's also not yet clear what the Australian government will actually do. Some commentators have called for the complete disbandment of the SAS precisely because anything less would be latched upon as hypocrisy. But many people in the government and mili
        • Disbanding the SAS would be a catastrophic mistake. That would leave Australia without a true special operations capability. What do you do after that? Create an entirely new unit from scratch, a new training program, new facilities? That would take years to complete. The only group that benefits from that is China. A potential enemy without its premier special operations unit. For me, that makes no sense. Hold those that did these acts accountably. If necessary, hold their leadership accountable. But to d
          • If the Chinese come for the Aussies, it isn't going to be the SAS that stops them.
            Let's be realistic- the military capabilities of Australia are largely for show at this juncture.
            What's the true harm in reforming?
          • There is no reason for China to physically attack Australia. It is only interested in fighting for its claimed territories. The rest of its political aims, it's already doing: propaganda and espionage (esp. cyber). The West will continue to lose ground if it keeps mistaking China for WWII Japan.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's nothing to do with offence or taking the high moral ground, it's propaganda. China competes with Australia for business in that part of the world, so anything which damages Australia's reputation is good for them.

        Other countries do this to China, and rightly since they are guilty of human rights abuses, and so China does it back to them. It's really that simple, Twitter is the new battleground for international propaganda efforts.

    • Re:sad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by niftydude ( 1745144 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @10:08PM (#60780798)
      You should be shocked and appalled by the allegations. I would say most Australians are.

      Not many (other than extremists) are saying that it is unacceptable for China to call this stuff out. The criticism of China is based on:

      1) China calling it out on Twitter via an extremely immature and graphic piece of art is extremely unbecoming of a country that wants to be respected as the next global superpower. If China wants to become a cultural leader in this century, this childishness is not the way that they will gain influence.

      2) There is very thick irony and hypocrisy in China using Twitter to call out human rights abuses when their totalitarian government doesn't even allow their citizens the ability to use Twitter. This breaches several of the UN articles of human rights - especially 18. Doubly ironic because the reason China keeps its citizens off social media is to prevent them discussing past Chinese human rights abuses such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

      3) Given that Chinese citizens aren't allowed to use Twitter, the purpose of the tweet was not so much to call out Australia, but to attempt to drive a wedge between the Afghani people and Australians. What China doesn't want to admit is that Australia has implemented multiculturalism very well - probably the best in the world. If you are Afghani, you will be much better off living in Australia than living in China as there is far less racism - both institutional and in the general populace. The challenges brown people face when living in China are extreme.

      • If you are Afghani, you will be much better off living in Australia than living in China as there is far less racism - both institutional and in the general populace. The challenges brown people face when living in China are extreme.

        This is a rather narrow statement. There are parts China that completely embrace these groups. It's common for Pakistani to marry Hui Chinese in a number of regions. While there are still some racial issues with Africans, by and large these issues are a minority though they often get a lot of press. I know a very tall, very big, black girl who lives here in Xining. She does get a lot of bad stares but I do too as an average build white male. This area is far more traditional and yet even here it's often

    • Bollocks. I am not sure which things you are thinking about which special forces have allegedly done but bits that came out recently are merely about the 'rite of passage'. That just to show off when you don't feel you don't have any reason for it. Imagine what that means when soldiers are getting 'aggravated'.
      So expect the whole thing to be the tip of the iceberg. Accompanying that is a long term coverup and a whistleblower (McBride) who has been persecuted. This isn't about a few rotten apples.

  • Chinese plagiarism out of control (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Joe2020 ( 6760092 ) on Monday November 30, 2020 @08:19PM (#60780530)

    Not only did they copy art work, they've also copied Donald Trump's style of tweeting of false facts!

  • The LNP's lack of diplomacy is the problem, they are arrogant, entitled idiots.
    Australia is on a slippery slope and there is a great big pit full of shit at the bottom.
    Hell, there's a great long list of fails for the Morrison government and it's just getting longer.

    • We were 'friends' as recently as 2014 when PM Abbott and President Xi signed a free trade agreement.

      By taking foreign policy advice from Mike Pompeo, China retaliates by trashing Australian products. And so our exports such as barley, wine and coal are thrown under the bus.

  • If your solders committed the act then why should anyone be forced to suppress the truth?

    At what point do we draw the line between X being inappropriate and true, vs X being a recognized act of horror that's true and we need to remember?

    The Chinese official in question should do nothing and offer no apology, the facts shouldn't change because they hurt someones feelings.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by deek ( 22697 )

      What truth? That an Australian soldier, grinning wildly, held a bloody knife to the throat of a child carrying a kid? Is that actually true?

      If not, then an apology is certainly in order.

      • From the sounds of it something to that effect happened which why the solders were in so much trouble. If the solders commit horrible acts, then any depiction of horrible acts and solders are fair game.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by deek ( 22697 )

          Oh that's a slippery slope you're on. Beware, lest your own country be similarly used for political advantage. You've now given a green light to that behaviour.

          • Please drag our Canadian solders through the mud! I have no respect for war or the people that freely choose to kill others based solely on their leaders small boy syndrome.
  • The interesting thing is that Australia and China both signed on a recent economic agreement, with China now stopping Australian coal from being bought (even though CHina is allowing another 20M tonnes of imported coal and Australia's is cleaner than Russia or Indonesia).
    Add in this and it is obvious that China is not going to make for a good business partner.

  • You're some warmongering war crimes monsters too now. You ran with the Murica, you get criticised with the Murica. Boo hoo.

    You do not like that depiction? Then don't do those war crimes, yer boody cunts!

    Funny, how you react just the same as the Chinese when we show them their war crimes in art.

    • Why you think our side would care at all about accuracy when thinking up things to accuse the Chinese of is beyond me. Just give it a superficial shine of credibility and you're good to go.
      All's fair in propaganda warfare.

      • So, you're defending genocidal slavers and pretending you're not on their side?

        • I'm on the side of truth against bullshit and in these times that is a very disloyal thing to do.

          • To who? China punishes people for telling the truth. Like the doctor they arrested for identifying a viral outbreak they wanted to cover up.

            Or are you suggesting that China doesn't have "re-education" and slave labor camps?

            China is evil. It is run by evil people for the preservation and enrichment of their own power at the expense of the people they oppress. If you think that's bullshit, I defy you to back it up.

            • Yes you know China is evil and you will believe anything that confirms that. What I am saying is that people like Adrian Zenz and the writers from the Epoch Times know that , and it emboldens them to state whatever claim they find useful. Nobody is interested in contradicting them. In the end you get a total disconnect from the truth. You believe anything with 'China evil' in it.
              And I have to prove you wrong? You're evil, prove me wrong.
              I can tell you that the claim of 1 million imprisoned Uyghurs is based

    • Okay, so it looks like 25 Australians did bad things in a war zone. Shameful, but Australia is prosecuting them because that's what a decent people do when their soldiers go bad.

      China is committing genocide and enslaving its people. It is a brutally repressive police-state that does to its own civilians what the Australians are accused of, as a matter of normal conduct. China is shameless about the violence and cruelty it inflicts upon its own and those around them.

      Australia investigated allegation

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dohzer ( 867770 )

        Yep... that's the difference. Actually punishing the perpetrators rather than lying and saying it never happened.

  • Yeah, well, what do you expect? (Score:3)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Tuesday December 01, 2020 @07:55AM (#60781746)

    China is run by fascist scumbags. The West should have taken them down fifty years ago and now we're stuck with them.

    • If I were Australia, I'd be kinda sore that a country I had just signed a big regional trade deal with posted something like this through official channels and laughed about it. I'd also be sore if they launched a series of coordinated cyber attacks against my businesses, which is what China immediately did to Japan. You expect better behavior from your partners.

      But when your partner is a pack of genocidal slavers, I guess you shouldn't expect much. Or do business with them at all.

  • Can we call the 2020 election fraud claims art as well?

    • If you're too fucking stupid to tell the difference between satire and a bad-faith claim, then you may as well do whatever the fuck you want, because you're irredeemably fucking stupid.

  • So I guess China would be ok with us, say, "simulating" their oppression of Tibet?
    Concentration-camping Uighurs?
    Farming prisoners for organs?
    ie with "pictures" of the "simulated" events?

    C'mon folks: here's someone with no lack of their own windows, literally telling everyone it's cool to chuck rocks.

    • I find your whataboutism appalling.
      Let's google for political cartoons made to satirize Chinese atrocities and have ourselves a blast applying your rule equally.

      You're using whataboutism to hide your shame. Pathetic.

  • Demanding an apology is like demanding people like you: its counter productive.

    Just because they're Chinese doesn't mean its the same thing as demanding the waiter brings you a doggy bag.

    Either way, you'll be hungry again in an hour.

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