Chinese woman sentenced to hard labour after satirical Twitter comment
A Chinese woman was arrested on her wedding day and sentenced to a year in a labour camp after she re-tweeted a Twitter post that mocked anti-Japanese protesters, according to human rights groups.
Cheng Jianping was convicted of "disturbing social order" after she added a few words to a message written by her fiancée, Hua Chunhui, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
The punishment, handed out by a court in the central province of Henan on Monday, is believed to be the harshest related to a tweet on the microblogging website.
Miss Cheng's Twitter username is "wangyi09", and conflicting reports have her aged either 46 or in her twenties.
On October 17, Cheng added the phrase "Angry youth, charge!" before retweeting Hua's message that mocked Chinese anti-Japanese protesters who had smashed Japanese products over a maritime dispute between the two countries, Amnesty said. Mr Hua, who was not charged over his tweet, had called for attacks on the Japanese pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. She disappeared ten days later, on her wedding day.
The international dispute erupted in early September when Tokyo arrested a Chinese trawler captain near a disputed East China Sea archipelago claimed by both sides.
"Sentencing someone to a year in a labour camp, without trial, for simply repeating another person's clearly satirical observation on Twitter demonstrates the level of China's repression of online expression," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Director for the Asia-Pacific.
Amnesty urged the government to release Cheng, who it said could be the first Chinese citizen to become "a prisoner of conscience on the basis of a single tweet."
The government blocks Twitter, but many people access it on the mainland via virtual proxy networks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...d-labour-after-satirical-Twitter-comment.html
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China
A Chinese woman was arrested on her wedding day and sentenced to a year in a labour camp after she re-tweeted a Twitter post that mocked anti-Japanese protesters, according to human rights groups.
Cheng Jianping was convicted of "disturbing social order" after she added a few words to a message written by her fiancée, Hua Chunhui, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
The punishment, handed out by a court in the central province of Henan on Monday, is believed to be the harshest related to a tweet on the microblogging website.
Miss Cheng's Twitter username is "wangyi09", and conflicting reports have her aged either 46 or in her twenties.
On October 17, Cheng added the phrase "Angry youth, charge!" before retweeting Hua's message that mocked Chinese anti-Japanese protesters who had smashed Japanese products over a maritime dispute between the two countries, Amnesty said. Mr Hua, who was not charged over his tweet, had called for attacks on the Japanese pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. She disappeared ten days later, on her wedding day.
The international dispute erupted in early September when Tokyo arrested a Chinese trawler captain near a disputed East China Sea archipelago claimed by both sides.
"Sentencing someone to a year in a labour camp, without trial, for simply repeating another person's clearly satirical observation on Twitter demonstrates the level of China's repression of online expression," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Director for the Asia-Pacific.
Amnesty urged the government to release Cheng, who it said could be the first Chinese citizen to become "a prisoner of conscience on the basis of a single tweet."
The government blocks Twitter, but many people access it on the mainland via virtual proxy networks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...d-labour-after-satirical-Twitter-comment.html
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China
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