TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – Two amateur computer coders brought by police home to Beijing last year were attacks on Tuesday in a case illustrating the Chinese government’s growing online censorship and sensitivity to any deviation from the official narrative about its response to COVID-19. .
Authorities have not said in particular why Chen Mei, 28, and Cai Wei, 27, were arrested, so their friends and family can only guess, as they believe it because either man had created an online file to buy deleted pieces through censors and the like. forum where users can simply ignore real name registration needs to chat anonymously.
The case is being tried in the Wenyuhe People’s Court in the northeastern suburbs of Beijing. Chen’s mother and Cai’s father were able to enter for a while before the trial began at nine a. m.
The archives, which began in 2018, have preserved many censored articles and the forum has noted discussions on sensitive issues, adding anti-government protests in Hong Kong and court cases opposed to the ruling Communist Party. the government appears to be archiving articles that appear to be an option for China’s official narrative about its reaction to the pandemic, as the country began to face questions about its handling of the initial epidemic.
By keeping articles censored and giving them a position to talk, the two face strict regulations in an online environment that is already suffocating under President Xi Jinping. Last year, many other people were processed by online speeches.
Chen and Cai are being processed for a “sowing and scolding” rhythm.
In January 2020, the two began archiving articles about a mysterious new disease circulating in Wuhan. For Cai, who is originally from the region and may not return home to see his circle of relatives for the Lunar New Year vacation, the news is annoying.
“A lot happened in China at the time that disappointed us and possibly he would have been affected by it,” said his girlfriend, Tang Hongbo, who was also arrested and released after 23 days when she has become transparent that she didn’t know much. “Every day we saw the Internet and we were all in this tragic mood. “
Xi has made cyberspace governance a precedent and, under his leadership, the government has created its own style for managing demanding Internet situations and opportunities. China has eliminated online anonymity by forcing others to log in under the so-called genuine 2016 formula. Social media accounts are connected to a cell phone number, which is connected to a person’s national identity number.
A Chinese activist, judicial and government archives and media reports, has documented more than 750 web-based speech processing in 2020 in an online database and posted to a Twitter account called SpeechFreedomCN. He said he managed the database anonymously for fear of reprisals.
A friend of Cai’s, who refused to be appointed for fear of reprisals, said Cai had been frustrated by the censorship regime. In response, he and Chen presented the Terminus2049 file and the 2049bbs forum in 2018 as a “flexible industry public platform”, Cai. wrote in a welcome message.
“It’s not just the formula of the “real name”: message deletions, bans, have reached a point that is in fact shocking nationally,” Cai wrote in another 2018 article. has touched a delicate keyword in an article you are writing, how can you have the courage to be explicit?”
In the forum, Cai wrote about the films, music and books he loved; others have addressed more sensitive issues. It is a position to communicate without worrying about deleting messages or banning your account. You didn’t need to have a phone number to register, not even an email address.
Chen more discreet but also irritated by the censorship system.
“You need data to circulate. He needs quality data freely,” said Chen Kun, his older brother. “We have this kind of price deep within our bones, the independence of internet discourse and data-free transmission. “
Cai and Chen met in 2011 at a summer camp organized through Liren College, a socially conscious educational program. Both self-taught coders began cooperating on a task to archive all the meetings and data from the summer camps, a friend of the two said. , who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The government closed Liren in 2014.
Terminus2049 basically houses articles that had been removed from WeChat and Weibo, popular social media platforms that are subject to normal human and algorithmic censorship. Although similar databases exist, a maximum of the number of databases have been blocked in China. exchange platform that is not blocked.
The topics covered in the archived articles were broad, but shared a focus on social issues, one on the expulsion of migrant personnel from Beijing after a fire, while others shared questions about a company that falsified knowledge of vaccines.
It was only after Cai and Chen were arrested in April last year that their families learned through friends and colleagues what they were running for. They suspect that the contents of the pandemic triggered the arrests, as a component because in the weeks before and after. After his arrest, police questioned the wisdom of what the two had done with the epidemic.
“They were told chen Mei had a circle of family members abroad, provided data to foreign organizations on the pandemic, and necessarily passed a knife to the enemy,” said Chen Kun, who now lives in France.
Beijing police responded to a request for comments faxed and court-appointed lawyers responded to phone calls.
Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan also broke the law after reporting from Wuhan at the start of the epidemic and won a four-year sentence in December.
The 2049bbs forum, which has never had a main reach, is now blocked in China. However, discussions continue and forum files live in a so-called 2047, created through a “person who describes herself as follows” and members of the old forum. .
Cai’s father, who has noticed his son for more than a year, still senses how his son faced the authorities.
“He said nothing wrong. He didn’t leave to organize protests,” Cai Jianli said. How did this come about by collecting fights and problems?”
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Associated Press video reporter Sam McNeil and Beijing press assistant Caroline Chen contributed to the story.