(TargetLiberty.org) – China’s totalitarian regime has jailed a popular blogger for “defaming martyrs,” in a new crackdown on free speech. The internet personality’s “crime” was allegedly insulting Chinese troops killed in a border clash with India.
China has jailed a popular blogger for "defaming martyrs" after he suggested the death toll of the China-India border clash last year was higher than the official count of four.
Qiu Ziming was sentenced to eight months in prisonhttps://t.co/EhQxbtkWgy pic.twitter.com/tdHrjvPBx7
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 1, 2021
On February 19, 25-year-old Qiu Ziming, who had 2.5 million followers on Chinese Twitter clone Weibo, commented on a violent incident last year. It involved PLA soldiers crossing into India from Chinese-occupied Tibet and killing 20 Indian border guards. The Indians fought back, killing up to 45 Chinese, but Beijing only admitted to four deaths – and Qiu didn’t believe them. A day later, he was detained by local police and locked up, as well as being forced to make a public apology for smearing “heroes who gave their lives to guard our home.”
That wasn’t enough for the Communist Party, though. On May 31, Qiu was convicted of defaming martyrs, under a law passed in 2018. He was sentenced to another eight months in prison, simply for disagreeing with the Party line that China’s increasingly aggressive troops were somehow innocent victims. The Chinese soldiers who attacked unarmed Indians last year were illegally occupying one country and trespassing into yet another – but Beijing doesn’t want to hear that.
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