PUBLISHED ON SATURDAY 26 JULY 2014.
Dong Rubin, a blogger in the southern Chinese province of Yunan who has written critically of local officials’ actions, has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison as a wave of arrests of journalists and bloggers signal tightening of government control of the internet.
Censors have gone so far as to prevent web searches for “Big Yellow Duck” . And references to toads have been systematically erased from the website of state news agency Xinhua. That move followed popular response to installation of a statue of the amphibian creature in Beijing park. Citizens mockingly claimed that it resembled former president Jiang Zemin.
That episode may be comical. But censorship and repression usually take harsher forms.
Imprisoned journalist Dong Rubin, who writes under the pseudonym Bianmin, has reported on local officials’ misappropriation of funds, and other actions. His sentence, also included a fine of 350,000 yuan (42,000 euros). His conviction in a court in the Wuhua district grows out of a government “anti-rumour” campaign.
“This conviction, following an unjust trial, shows officials’ determination to muzzle all critical voices,” said Benjamin Ismaïl, head of the Reporters Without Borders Asia-Pacific desk. “The action also shows authorities’ sense of weakness in the face of a growing numbers of netizens and whistleblowers. Party officials, and the political and government elite in general, feel themselves under constant threat from bloggers’ asserting freedom of speech and the right to criticize.”