NNA - Twitter on Thursday said it had shut down nearly 3,500 accounts that were posting pro-government propaganda in six countries, including China and Russia.

The vast majority of the accounts were part of a network that "amplified Chinese Communist Party narratives related to the treatment of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang," Twitter said in a statement.

China faces accusations of grave human rights violations against the ethnic minority in the northwestern province, where experts have estimated that more than one million people are incarcerated in camps.

Aside from 2,048 accounts linked to the pro-Beijing campaign, Twitter also shut 112 accounts connected to a company named Changyu Culture, linked to Xinjiang's regional government.

The move came a day after Facebook's parent company Meta said it had shut down more than 500 accounts that were part of a China-linked influence campaign relating to Covid-19. The accounts promoted claims from a fictitious Swiss biologist, Wilson Edwards, that the United States was interfering in efforts to identify the origins of the coronavirus.

Chinese state media had widely quoted "Edwards" in July, although several newspapers deleted references to him after the Swiss Embassy in Beijing said there was no trace of him.

Both Twitter and Facebook are banned in China, but Beijing frequently uses both US social networks to promote its positions on the international stage.—AFP

==============R.H.