|
http://www.ministryoftofu.com China puts a gag on social media and makes arrests for coup rumors China has shut down 16 websites, placed a blanket comment ban on two microblogging services, and apprehended six people as punishment for their “concocting and/or disseminating” coup rumors. On the morning of March 31, Sina Weibo users who tried to leave comments received an error message from the system, “To all Weibo users, recently, comments left by microbloggers have started to contain much illegal and detrimental information, including rumors. In an effort to clean them up in one stroke, comments function of Sina Weibo will be temporarily disabled from 8 a.m. March 31 to 8 a.m. April 3. After the clean-up, we will reopen comments section. Necessary clean-up of information is conducive to providing everyone a better communicating atmosphere. We expect your understanding and consideration. Thank your for your support.” Tencent Weibo has a similar announcement on its website. But both microblogging services have kept their post and repost function intact. The decision to muzzle social media users came from the Chinese authorities after Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, two of the country’s most popular Twitter-like services, kept spilling out rumors about a coup d’état in the pipeline masterminded by Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai’s political allies, after Bo, a political wonder boy and flamboyant demagogue, was suddenly ousted from his post as the party boss of Chongqing, China’s most populous directly-controlled city. Many netizens said they saw tanks roll into the capital. Some even claimed they heard gunshots fired. The ouster of Bo Xilan, while he was still a political hopeful aiming for a seat in the 9-member Politburo Standing Committee, the stratosphere of Chinese politics, as a result of split with protégé Wang Lijun, who sought political asylum from the United States, is a political scandal redolent of mystery-looking and drama-filled Hollywood film that piqued the curiosity of Chinese netizens, who, thanks to the social media, are able to steal a peek. At first, moderators, particularly those at Sina Weibo, blocked key words such as ‘Bo Xilai’, ‘Zhou Yongkang’ (Bo’s ally and strongest supporter in the Politburo Standing Committee), and ‘Chongqing’, so that any discussion containing these “sensitive words” will automatically trigger the censoring apparatus and be disabled. However, netizens one-upped censors by inventing imaginative and humorous substitute words to get around the restriction. For example, they called Bo Xilai The Prince in the West, and Zhou has been nicknamed for a popular brand of instant noodles.
|