THE Highland Tories have been forced to delete their Facebook account after making “absolutely disgusting” claims that living in Scotland and not supporting the SNP is like being an Uighur in China.
The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking ethnic minority group from Central Asia, with the majority living in the Xinjiang region in the west of the country.
Under current Chinese premier Xi Jinping, Muslim minorities are being arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned. It’s estimated around one million Uighur Muslims have been detained in what China calls “vocational training centres”, according to Dr Anna Hayes from Australia’s James Cook University.
Hayes said there is growing evidence of human rights violations inside the centres as well as reports of deaths in custody and forced labour. Many Uighurs outside the centres refuse to speak Mandarin, while others campaign for independence.
This is seen as a threat by the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, who treat such “dissent” as a danger to state security. Today, the United States announced that it considers China’s actions to amount to genocide.
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The Highland Tories Facebook account drew comparisons between the situation of those Uighur Muslims in China and people in Scotland who do not support the SNP.
The SNP made headlines this week after it said that it considers the political broadcast following Nicola Sturgeon’s daily briefings on the BBC to be “starkly biased”.
The SNP say they are “deeply concerned” about the format of the programme – particularly the final 15 minutes where opposition politicians discuss the pandemic response.
Responding to this news, the Highland Tories Facebook group wrote: “The SNP is happy to destroy freedom of speech for everyone else except the SNP.
“We all know where that behaviour ends up, just ask the Uighurs - except you can’t ……..”
The Highland Liberal Democrats reshared the post, adding: “This is an absolutely disgusting post from the Highland Conservatives.
READ MORE: SNP blast BBC's new 'biased' coronavirus briefing show
“Innocent people are being locked up in ‘re-education camps’. This is an issue which should not be used for cheap point scoring and is in no way comparable to the SNP.”
The post brought other comments from the Highland Tories group to light, including frequent references to Nicola Sturgeon’s party as “National Socialists” (Nazis).
One post claimed that people in Scotland are “on the cusp of living in a National Socialist police state”.
Another labelled SNP parliamentarians “National Socialist banana republicans”, while a third claimed the party is a “cult of National Socialist hatred”.
Does @Douglas4Moray endorse his Highland colleagues of comparing the SNP to the Nazis? https://t.co/4jDgUPM3bg
— Lloyd Melville (@LloydAMelville) January 18, 2021
When the posts from the page were brought to the attention of Facebook, the tech giant ruled that they did not “go against one of our specific Community Standards”, so no action was taken.
Lloyd Melville, who originally highlighted the posts on social media, told The National he thought it was "absolutely shocking that any person would seek to make such ugly, vile and completely nonsense comparisons".
He added: "The fact that a local association of a registered political party is doing it is utterly unacceptable and they should be ashamed of themselves. An apology should be issued immediately, and the person responsible for making these ugly posts should be removed from their position."
The Highland Tory page’s top post was a message from the group’s admins asking people not to “sink to the level of the cybernat trolls and their toxic hate-fuelled ideology”. It said they would not hesitate to “hide or delete material” they deemed inappropriate.
The page has now been removed from Facebook, apparently after the central Scottish Tory party was made aware of the post referencing the Uighurs.
The group's website, www.highlandconservatives.co.uk, is still live and has many references to "nationalist extremists" under its "SNP Failures" section.
Commenting on the post which referenced Uighurs, a Scottish Conservative spokesperson said: “The contents of this post are clearly unacceptable, and it was deleted as soon as it was brought to the attention of the party.
“This was not sanctioned by the party, elected representatives or the local association. This account has now been unpublished."
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