Skip to main content

Tag: Human rights

Censoring the Metaverse

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends.

A post by the Hong Kong independent media outlet Boom News (爆炸頭) commemorating the 14th anniversary this past week of the death of Tiananmen activist Li Wangyang (李旺阳) was removed from social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

The posts commemorated Li, a labor organizer and pioneering advocate for independent trade unionism in China who played a leading role in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement. After 22 years in Chinese prisons, Li was released in 2012 in such poor health that he required immediate hospitalization. He was found dead in his hospital room on June 6 of that year. Authorities ruled his death a suicide and cremated his body without his family’s consent.

Meta offered no public explanation for the takedowns and also permanently terminated the outlet’s monetization on both platforms. The removal coincides with growing restrictions on commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, not only in China, where any reference to June 4 is prohibited and removed from the internet, but also in Hong Kong, where authorities have arrested people for posting about the anniversary on social media and a once-massive annual candlelight vigil is no longer allowed.

Boom News is a YouTube-based platform focusing on Hong Kong stories, with close to 50,000 subscribers on the platform.

“Picking Quarrels”

Written by LS Staff on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on “Picking Quarrels”

Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan (張展), previously imprisoned for reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, was sentenced to another four years in prison on September 19 on charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (尋釁滋事). The 42-year-old former lawyer, who completed a four-year sentence in May 2024 for her reporting from Wuhan during the pandemic, had been detained since August 2024 after supporting pro-democracy activist Zhang Pancheng (張盼成), who posted a video criticizing China’s human rights record. Zhang Zhan’s indictment accused her of “widely spreading insulting content about others and false information seriously damaging the country’s image on overseas social media, causing public disorder.” There has not been a peep about the case in China’s media — no surprise there. [Learn more about the “Picking Quarrels” charge in the CMP Dictionary.]

Zhang Zhan appears in a BBC interview in May 2020, several months before her initial detention.

SET News Spotlights Transnational Repression

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on SET News Spotlights Transnational Repression

SET News (三立新聞), a Taiwanese news outlet, has launched a multimedia series examining the Chinese Communist Party’s tactics for cross-border repression. The project features interviews with individuals from the United States, China and Hong Kong, including Mark Clifford (祈福德), a former executive at Next Digital, and Ka-Man Lau (劉珈汶), a Hong Kong activist now based in the United Kingdom. Other participants include Shirley Leung (梁嘉麗) and Ka-Chung Li (李家聰), who co-founded the Taiwan-based news outlet PulseHK (追光者), as well as various Chinese sources who remain anonymous to avoid repercussions.

The reporting explores what interviewees describe as “bloodless torture” methods used against political prisoners in China, as well as intimidation tactics targeting overseas Chinese communities. The series provides direct testimonials from individuals who have either faced or witnessed Beijing’s pressure tactics across multiple regions.

Discussing their motivations for speaking out, one anonymous Chinese individual told SET News, “I feel a responsibility to raise my voice for those in China who do not have a voice.”