In the days following communist China’s 70th-anniversary National Day on Oct. 1, authorities have detained multiple people after they made statements criticizing or satirizing the Chinese Communist Party’s rule.
In the eastern province of Shandong, police in the city of Rizhao announced on Oct. 3 via social media that they had arrested three men whose Internet posts constituted “insults to the country.”
Incidentally, the Rizhao Internet Police Law Enforcement Patrol’s posts displayed evidence of the netizens’ “crimes,” namely, the unorthodox statements they had made.
“The motherland didn’t raise you, your mother did,” one of the suspects wrote, criticizing the CCP’s oft-repeated claim that it provides for the well-being and prosperity of China’s vast population.
According to netizens who had made screenshots of the offending post before its deletion, the suspect, surnamed Xu, had gone on to write that the excessive National Day celebrations were “a drain on the people; since you have that much money, you should use it for the people’s welfare instead of constantly spending it on useless things.”
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On Twitter, a Chinese-language comment read: “Such common sense and rationality, in the eyes of the lowlifes staffing the Rizhao Internet Police Law Enforcement Patrol, has been turned into the crime of spreading rumors, for which one can be handcuffed and jailed. Seems the Hongkongers are smart enough and you have the foresight to know that if you don’t resist tyranny to the very end, the Chinese people’s present situation will be yours tomorrow.
In Jiangsu Province, which is to the south of Shandong, a netizen in the city of Suqian posted on Oct. 6 a series of messages in his WeChat group that made fun of the People’s Liberation Army march in Beijing.
The netizen shared videos that appear to be the PLA troops’ rehearsals for the grand military parade, with comments mocking their stiff, robot-like movements.
“In civilized countries, they turn robots into soldiers. In bandit countries, they turn soldiers into robots,” one of his posts said.
“They do a diligent job of talking nonsense, and talk nonsense about the things that they should be doing a diligent job on,” another post of his went.
The user was given a 7-day detention for “making sarcastic, insulting remarks.”
Arrests on and around Oct. 1 have occurred throughout the country, including in the northeastern province of Liaoning, the southern provinces of Sichuan and Hunan, and in Beijing itself.
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