Hillary Clinton, who has increasingly turned to Twitter as she plans her all-but-announced presidential run, upset the Chinese government on Monday with a message she posted on the social networking site.
“The detention of women’s activists in #China must end,” Clinton tweeted. “This is inexcusable.”
The tweet linked to a New York Times story about five female activists in China who were arrested for protesting a wide array of women’s issues. They stand accused, according to the Times, of provoking social instability.
The message did not go over well inside the Chinese government, according to Reuters.
“China is a country ruled by law. Relevant departments will handle the relevant case according to law,” Hua Chunying, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Tuesday. “We hope that public figures in other countries can respect China’s judicial sovereignty and independence.”
Clinton criticizing the Asian nation’s human rights record is far from new.
A highpoint of Clinton’s eight years in the East Wing was at the United Nations’ 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing, where the then-first lady took on China’s human rights record and declared, “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.”
“Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments,” Clinton said. “It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.”
Clinton has mentioned her 1995 speech in Beijing a number of times in the last two years, and Democrats close to the former secretary of state have said that moments like that will loom large in her second — and soon to be announced — presidential run.
Republicans jumped on Clinton’s tweet and the Chinese reaction on Tuesday, noting how Clinton said in 2009 that pressing on human rights “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis” in China.
“We have to have a dialogue that leads to an understanding and cooperation on each of those,” Clinton said in South Korea at the time.
Michael Short, spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said that Clinton “mistakenly thinks she can paper over her disastrous foreign policy record 140 characters at a time.”