Chinese woman sentenced to labour camp over a tweet

A Chinese woman sentenced to a year in a labour camp could be the first person in the country persecuted over a tweet, human rights groups said Friday, as Beijing tightens its grip on social media.

Cheng Jianping, 46, was convicted on Monday of “disturbing social order” after she retweeted a Twitter posting that mocked anti-Japanese protesters and suggested they attack the Japanese pavilion at Shanghai’s World Expo.

“To my knowledge it is the first time … someone was sent to labour camp for tweeting,” said Vincent Brossel, a representative of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.

Even though Twitter is blocked in China, the government has sent a “very clear message … that they watch it and (users should) be careful,” he said. Amnesty International has urged the government to release Cheng, whose sentencing comes as China faces intense criticism over its tough reaction to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed dissident writer Liu Xiaobo.

Cheng, an online activist who had supported Liu and other rights defenders, could be the first Chinese citizen to become “a prisoner of conscience on the basis of a single tweet,” Amnesty said.

On October 17, Cheng added the phrase “Angry youth, charge!” before retweeting a message posted by her fiance, Hua Chunhui, that mocked Chinese anti-Japanese protesters who had smashed Japanese products over a maritime dispute between the two countries, Amnesty said.

Hua wrote that if protesters “really wanted to kick it up a notch, you’d immediately fly to Shanghai to smash the Japanese Expo pavilion”.

The dispute erupted in early September when Tokyo arrested a Chinese trawler captain near a disputed East China Sea archipelago claimed by both sides.

Hua said Cheng’s sentence was “completely illegal and absurd and without any reason”.

“I don’t think our punishment was right, we only tweeted one sentence and it’s satirical,” said Hua, who had planned to marry Cheng on October 28.

Activist group Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said Friday that Cheng, whose Twitter username is “wangyi09“, went on a two-day hunger strike after she was convicted on Monday. It was not known if Cheng had started eating again.

Officials at the labour camp and public security bureau in the central province of Henan declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

“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’s Director for the Asia-Pacific.

The Chinese government blocks social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, but many people access them on the mainland via virtual proxy networks.

Liu Xiaobo — jailed for 11 years last December on subversion charges after co-authoring a petition calling for political reform in one-party China — was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month.

His win prompted an angry response from Beijing, which has responded by muzzling the dissident writer’s family members. – AFP