![]() ![]() “When did patient zero begin in US?” Zhao wrote. Zhao had already made headlines once before, for a tweet in the early days of the pandemic in which he floated a conspiracy theory that the virus originated in the United States. “I don’t think you could imagine a communication that could’ve been more perfectly shaped to be inflammatory in Australia, and so perfectly insensitive,” a former senior Australian government official said. To then see the country’s most grievous sins - already documented by its own government - weaponized in a sarcastic tweet from a foreign official was an almost incomprehensible insult. The report dominated news headlines for weeks and sparked a torturous national reckoning in Australia. The investigation, which described a systemic culture of brutality and lawlessness, implicated 25 soldiers in the unlawful killing of 39 civilians and prisoners, with most of the incidents taking place in 2012. “Don’t be afraid,” the caption read, “we are coming to bring you peace!” When the tweet appeared online that morning, there were audible gasps in Australia’s Parliament House.Įarlier that month, the inspector general of the Australian Defense Force had released the results of a four-year investigation into alleged war crimes committed by elite Australian troops in Afghanistan. “We strongly condemn such acts, & call for holding them accountable.” Attached was a digital illustration of an Australian soldier restraining an Afghan child with a large Australian flag while preparing to slit the boy’s throat. “Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Australian soldiers,” he wrote. ![]() Morrison was about to finish a two-week quarantine after returning from a brief diplomatic visit to Japan, and he had spent most of the morning on the phone with Australian wine exporters, discussing Chinese tariffs that had just taken effect - some as high as 212 percent - the latest in an escalating string of punitive economic measures imposed on Australia by Beijing.īut the tweet, posted by a diplomat named Zhao Lijian, represented a different kind of aggression. 30, 2020, the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison was working from his official residence when an aide alerted him to a tweet by a Chinese foreign-ministry spokesman. ![]() To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
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