{"id":5539,"date":"2015-08-19T23:17:40","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T03:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=5539"},"modified":"2015-08-19T23:17:40","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T03:17:40","slug":"china-jails-dissident-over-tianjin-blast-death-toll-retweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/china-jails-dissident-over-tianjin-blast-death-toll-retweet","title":{"rendered":"China Jails Dissident Over Tianjin Blast Death Toll Retweet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image<\/a>2015-08-19<\/p>\n

Shen Liangqing, April 2010.
\nPhoto courtesy of Shen Liangqing<\/p>\n

Authorities in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui have jailed veteran activist and whistle-blower Shen Liangqing on public order charges after he retweeted a social media post about last week’s devastating warehouse explosions in Tianjin, his relatives told RFA.<\/p>\n

Former state-prosecutor-turned-whistle-blower Shen Liangqing, who wrote a book detailing abuses under the <!–more–>ruling Chinese Communist Party’s internal disciplinary regime, was handed a nine-day administrative sentence by police in the provincial capital, Hefei.<\/p>\n

“He went downstairs to buy groceries, and when he came back, I saw three police officers following him,” Shen’s son Shen Li said in an interview on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“He took out his cell phone and gave it to me, so they didn’t confiscate it,” he said. “Then they left.”<\/p>\n

He said police had told him his father was being detained on suspicion of “fabricating facts and disturbing public order.”<\/p>\n

“He called me [on Tuesday] and told me to bring him some clothes and other items to the Wuhu Road police station,” Shen Li said. “When I went there, he gave me the administrative detention notice.”<\/p>\n

According to the notice, Shen Liangqing retweeted a post on a social media platform on Aug. 15, 2015 which said that at least 1,400 people had died in the Tianjin explosions, while more than 700 were still missing.<\/p>\n

“This information was not accurate,” the notice said.<\/p>\n

Charges ‘unfair’<\/p>\n

Shen Li said the charges against his father, a former prosecutor at the Hefei municipal procuratorate, were unfair.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think it amounts to fabricating information if you are just retweeting something,” Shen Li said.<\/p>\n

“The reason the tweet was not accurate was a lack of openness and transparency on the part of the government,” he added.<\/p>\n

China’s propaganda ministry has ordered the country’s tightly controlled media outlets to stick to officially approved news stories, which put the death toll in Tianjin at 114.<\/p>\n

Tweets and social media messages linked to the disaster initially gave a real-time glimpse of the two devastating explosions and their aftermath, but were later tracked down and deleted by China’s Internet censors.<\/p>\n

China’s draconian Internet agency, the Cyberspace Administration, said it had suspended more than 360 social media accounts since the blasts rocked Tianjin.<\/p>\n

Shen Li said if anyone was held responsible, it should be the original poster of the offending tweet.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think that retweeting on its own should be a crime,” he said. “Rumors only emerge because the government is closed and secretive. If they were more transparent, they wouldn’t circulate.”<\/p>\n

An officer who answered the phone at the Wuhu Road police station in Hefei declined to comment on Shen’s case.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know about this,” the officer said.<\/p>\n

For detail please visit here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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