The Foreign Office (FO) said on Friday that the official Twitter account of the Pakistan consulate in the Chinese city of Chengdu was “hacked”.

“As of today, any tweet or message issued from this account is not made by the Pakistan consulate general Chengdu nor does it reflect the position of the government of Pakistan,” said Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch.

The statement came hours after the official account for the consulate general tweeted in support of Uighur Muslims.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is thankful for Chinese aid and support for flood reconstruction. We will work closely on matters of mutual interests, including rights and freedom of Uighurs community,” the tweet said, which has not yet been deleted, said.

Beijing has been accused for years of detaining more than one million Uighurs and other Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region. It has vehemently rejected the claims, insisting it is running vocational centres designed to curb extremism.

In September last year, the United Nations released a major report into serious alleged human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region, saying torture allegations were credible and citing possible crimes against humanity but stopped short of calling it genocide.

Today’s development also comes a little over a month after the official Twitter account of the Pakistani consulate in the Afghan city of Kandahar was hacked. The account had posted tweets about the temporary closure of the mission to in protest in order to urge the Afghan government to act against the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan.

In December 2021, the official Twitter account of Pakistan’s embassy in Serbia had been hacked and had tweeted criticism targeting former premier Imran Khan, citing rising inflation and alleged non-payment of salaries for three months.