“I’ve been warned not to talk about it,” the woman wrote, before revealing snippets of the day she says she was arrested for publishing gay erotica.
“I’ll never forget it - being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”
The handle, Pingping Anan Yongfu, is among at least 8 in recent months which have shared accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo of being arrested for publishing gay erotic fiction. As authors recounted their experiences, dozens of lawyers offered pro bono help.
At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.
But .ml communities promise meChina has mote free speech than the West! How is this possible?
/s
You don’t even have to be charged with anything before ICE grabs you off the street and throws you in a van in the US…
Which is true for China as well
Yes it’s fucking horrible, I have the misfortune of living in the US but the same goes for China, North Korea, Russia and I could go on.
Yeah, unfortunately the US is becoming more and more like China in this regard.
And I assume you wish the US to keep doing that because China is doing that and it’s clearly working?
I’m simply responding to the commenter’s comparison to “the west”. Like, if that’s the game we’re gonna play I think I just scored a point. Both situations are obviously terrible duh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Very USA-Centric of you lol
USA =/= “The West”
Also useless whataboutism. The sign of someone who has no arguments left to defend their beliefs.
The US is part of the west. If it happens in the US, it happens in the west, because the US is in the west.
Move the goalpost much? The US is in “the west” and they consistently set the tone and run the show. Welcome to geopolitics hope you enjoy your stay!
Very typical .ml whataboutism. Both things can be bad at the same time. This is not a null sum game.
They’re on .world, how is this .ml Whataboutism to call out that both countries are horrid to their citizens?
Can you connect these dots for me?
Nah.
To be clear, writing and posting erotica isn’t illegal, its profiting off it that was illegal, which is still fucked, but less of a free speech issue.
It’s really only a matter of degrees as you can sell other things for a profit so why not your literature?
Correct. But at the same time, once you understand your speech is limited by your reach, which is determined by how big of a megaphone the capitalists will let you have, it becomes more murky. You can say whatever you want in America, and if the government doesnt like it, you will be silenced and ignored. The same applies in China, but there is a greater record of the government actually listening, though often to the worst groups, such as nimbys protesting the expansion of the Shangai maglev and assholes protesting even limited lockdowns in the city with the most covid that keeps infecting the rest of the country.
Che Guevara, from Desalinas PFP, was also rather homophonic. I wouldn’t make it a point of purity testing. People in the past did things according to their time (not saying its justified).
The .ml crew has enought to criticize today. Big part them being a different flavor of impiralism
Which other word did he sound like?
Wdym?
This isn’t a purity test. This is me making fun of the tankies on .ml