China’s microblogs censor the words “Egypt” and “Tunisia”

30 Jan 11 | Asia and Pacific, China

Terms like Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the names of high profile Chinese dissidents have long been censored in China, but now it’s the turn of country names.

A search on Weibo — a twitter-like service owned by Sina — for the words “Egypt” or “Tunisia” in Chinese returns the message: “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results cannot be shown.” The names of the countries in English are not blocked.

News wires are reporting that Sohu’s microblog has also blocked searches for Egypt.

The state news services, though, are covering the protests in both countries and regular searches on online Chinese search engines are not blocking the words.

This new and curious development follows recent anti-government protests in both countries. Riots in major Egyptian cities including Cairo and Alexandria have left more than 100 people dead. The unrest in Tunisia toppled the president. Protests are continuing over the choice of ministers for the interim government.

Global Voices Online is reporting that some Chinese bloggers have set up regular updates of Egyptian news on Weibo which comes up in searches for “Egypt” in English.

The censorship all seems a bit over the top. As one China-based western blogger observed: “Anything is possible, I suppose, but the very idea of Chinese activists being so inspired by the riots in Egypt that they’d try to implement the same tactics in China is so absurd it’s laughable.”

Dissident Writer Li Hong Dies During Medical Parole

13 Jan 11 | Asia and Pacific, China

The sad death of jailed writer Zhang Jianhong went by with hardly a blip from the foreign media.

Zhang, 52, died 31 December in hospital while on medical parole from a rare neurological disease. He leaves behind a wife and daughter.

A few months into his prison term in Zhejiang province, Zhang, whose pen name was Li Hong,  was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, a disorder in which the muscles irreversibly waste away. The prison repeatedly denied him medical parole until June last year, by which time he was completely paralysed and was kept alive by a respirator.

Zhang had been sentenced to six years for “inciting subversion of state power” in March 2007 for his work as a contributor to anti-Chinese government, pro-human rights media overseas including the Epoch Times and Boxun.

Radio Free Asia also reported that Chinese police warned his dissident friends not to publicly mourn Zhang.

Zhang had a long history of angering the authorities. In December 1989 he was sentenced to three years of Re-education Through Labour for publicly criticizing the Tiananmen Square Massacre. He briefly took part in the protests but left the Square on 2 June.

His contacts with the China Democracy Party also got him periodically in trouble.

In 2005, he founded Aegean Sea, a literary website which was closed down by the police the following year for its anti-government content.

Zhang was also a commercially successful freelance writer and poet, penning several novels and a popular TV show The Firm of Red Clothes.

He was a member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) which released a statement mourning his death.

“ICPC considers Mr Zhang Jianhong as the most recent victim of contemporary literary inquisition in China and one of its worst cases in over 30 years,” the centre said.

“May his spirit live on,” said US-based Human Rights in China.