Beijing sentenced over 50 individuals – many everyday Chinese people – to prison for the offense of posting unfavorable comments about President Xi Jinping or the Chinese Communist Party on foreign social media platforms, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The paper, citing court records and a database produced by free-speech activists, reported that the sentencings were seen as an attempt by Beijing to consolidate speech and punish criticism on platforms outside of the country’s internet.
The report said some of the topics ranged from discussions about Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party, and its treatment of Muslim Uighurs in the western Xinjiang region.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during his last day in office that he determined China is committing “genocide and crimes against humanity” in the region by targeting the ethnic group.
Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher with Human Rights Watch, told the Journal that Beijing “knows well from its domestic experiences that propaganda only works when it is coupled with censorship of opposing views.”
One of those sentenced was Zhou Shaoqing, who was given nine months in prison over a Twitter post in February that questioned coronavirus infections, according to the paper.
He took to Twitter and astutely posted, “The Chinese Communist Party system regards stability as its principle, and in the face of big problems, everyone protects themselves.” He went on to say that health officials and hospitals would all eventually “reduce the number of confirmed cases” for the public’s digestion.
The paper reported that later that month, three men arrived at his apartment dressed as neighborhood volunteers. Once he let them in, seven police officers rushed in and pinned him to the floor to make the arrest. He had a grand total of 300 Twitter followers at the time.
TREND FORECAST: The Chinese police scheme of using a front to open the door and then have cops rush in and arrest the person is no different than what has long been going on in so-called western democracies such as the U.S., the U.K., France, the Netherlands, etc. Yet, the way it is reported by the Presstitute media, it appears only the Chinese use such anti-freedom/military tactics.
Forgetting that Washington, D.C. has been taken over by the U.S. military and some 30,000 troops closed the city down on Inauguration Day to lock out protestors who believed the American election was stolen… the mainstream media attacked the Russian military squads for doing what western nations do to break up protests.
On Sunday, CBC News reporter Chris Brown, reporting from Moscow, covered the protests of Putin critic and head of Russia of the Future, Alexei Navalny, who was sent to jail when he returned to Russia on 17 January. Brown began the broadcast in a tense voice saying, “This is a line of riot police with their batons looking very intimidating indeed, on a day of unprecedented security here in Moscow.”
He went on, saying, “Unprecedented security, we’re talking riot police, we’re talking national guard, regular police by the thousands… you can see these riot squad officers marching toward the crowd looking very intimidating.”
Again, it is a double standard. Hate your enemies but salute those you love who commit the same brutal behavior. Rarely, if ever, do these Presstitutes display Brown’s intensity or use his kind of language when the police and military in western nations use the same tactics. And as for “unprecedented” and “intimidating,” the armored vehicles and military drag many police troops dress up in America to smash into people’s homes and break up protests is of the highest levels of dictatorial governments.
