07 Jun 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
Chinese dissident Li Wangyang, who was jailed for over 22 years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, was found dead in a hospital ward in Shaoyang city, Hunan province, on Wednesday. Family members found the dissident, 62, apparently hanged by a bandage around his neck in his hospital room. Security and hospital authorities have said he had committed suicide but his family has said Li died in strange circumstances. Police are also reported to have removed his body without the family’s permission.
06 Jun 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
The editor of a Chinese newspaper has been dismissed after posting comments online deemed critical of the government. Yu Chen, editor of the investigative news desk at Southern Metropolitan Newspaper, was initially suspended and later forced to resign after he accidentally used the newspapers Sina Weibo account to respond a question on whether China’s Ministry of National Defence should serve the Chinese Communist Party. Yu’s post was deleted immediately, along with the message he was responding to. Yu is the first journalist in China to be forced to resign from a newspaper as a result of online comments.
31 May 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
China’s film censors have erased 13 minutes of footage from the new Men in Black film to remove the appearance of Chinese villains. Beijing’s censors have removed a scene showing an alien disguised as a Chinese restaurant worker, along with the appearance of a Chinese cashier girl who uses her long alien tongue to attack Will Smith’s character, Agent J. The final cut taken from the film involved Smith erasing the memories of a group of Chinese onlookers. One of the country’s newspapers speculated that the last scene had been removed as a statement on “internet censorship to maintain social stability”.
28 May 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
China‘s largest microblogging service has introduced a code of conduct to restrict the type of messages that can be posted. The new move from Sina Weibo, seen to be the latest attempt to censor social media, comes after local authorities criticised the posting of “unfounded” rumours on the network. Under the new rules, users start with 80 “points” which can be deducted for breaking the sites code of conduct, and repeat offenders risk having their accounts deleted. The site has also developed a “community convention” clearly outlining what type of postings are unacceptable on the site.
