Chinese authorities have arrested at least six people and are targeting a teenager living abroad for posting online about Chinese soldiers killed in a border clash last year.
Last week, the Chinese government awarded posthumous honors to four soldiers who died after the confrontation of the Galwan valley with Indian forces, in the disputed border regions of the Himalayas.
The men were detained under a 2018 law that makes it illegal to defame “heroes and martyrs” in China. An amendment that will go into effect this month carries a possible three-year prison sentence. Another man who the police said has lived abroad since July 2019, was “persecuted online” because of comments he made about soldiers, “on suspicion of causing problems on the Internet”.
In a statement, Chongqing city police said the 19-year-old man, surnamed Wang and posting on Weibo as @ tscb8, “slandered and disparaged heroes” with his comments, “causing negative social impact”.
“Heroes and martyrs cannot be profaned. Cyberspace is not outlawed, ”he said.
“Public security agencies will crack down on acts that openly insult the deeds and spirit of heroes and martyrs according to the law.”
The others, who were arrested or surrendered, were between 20 and 40 years old. Four were charged with committing crimes on Weibo and WeChat and sentenced to criminal imprisonment for up to 15 days. Others have been held in administrative detention, one of the many forms of detention of suspects in China and which has been criticized by human rights groups in the past.
One man is Nanjing’s blogger, Qiu Ziming, who allegedly questioned the official death toll given by Chinese authorities and the eight-month timetable before an official announcement. Indian officials said at the time they believed that about 45 Chinese soldiers had died.
Qui was suspected of “provoking fights and causing problems”, a widely defined crime that takes 10 years in prison and is often used against journalists and activists. Qiu’s Weibo account, which had more than 2.5 million followers, has since been suspended.
Yaqui Wang, China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the persecution of the 19-year-old was a tactic by the authorities “to show that they would not tolerate any discourse questioning the official narrative of the border conflict, no matter where the critic is physically located ”.
“The authorities used to harass critics based abroad or their families based in China without resorting to a formal prosecution mechanism or leaving a paper trail,” Wang told the Guardian. “Now they think they don’t have to be discreet about it, or maybe they even want to draw attention to it.”
The tribute to Chinese soldiers was the first time that China officially confirmed any death in the violent conflict, which saw hand-to-hand combat between hundreds of Indian and Chinese soldiers in a narrow Himalayan mountain range, using cudgels and stones as weapons. It is the deadliest conflict between the two sides in 40 years.
Images of Chinese soldiers and patriotic quotes attributed to them covered state media last week, and some videos were released of the confrontation in the river, including several wounded soldiers. The reports were trending topics in China over the weekend, attracting millions of posts and comments from the public, including under the hashtag “they died for me”.
India and China announced that they would withdraw their troops from their disputed border on February 11. China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that both sides had initiated a “synchronized and organized” shutdown.
The tense stalemate high in the Karakoram Mountains began in early May, when Indian officials said Chinese soldiers crossed the border at three different points in the Indian state of Ladakh, erecting tents and guard posts and ignoring verbal warnings to leave. This sparked screaming disputes, throwing stones and punching fights, many of which were repeated on television news channels and social networks.
Tensions erupted in hand-to-hand combat with clubs, stones and fists on June 15, which left 20 Indian soldiers dead.