Chinese Henan netizen Chen Shaotian (known as “National Cursing Brother” and “Brother Tian”) was sentenced a week ago by a court in Fugou County, Henan Province, to one year and two months in prison for provoking and provoking trouble for posting more than fifty tweets with content that allegedly hypes hot domestic events in China.
Chen Shaotian, a Henan netizen, expressed his dissatisfaction with China’s social system and phenomena through performance art and tweeted videos of the content. On March 25 this year, he was sentenced to one year and two months in prison by the Fugou County Court for the crime of provoking and provoking trouble.
According to the criminal verdict of the Fugou County Court in Henan Province, Chen Shaotian used several cell phones to take videos of himself and posted them on Twitter from March last year to January this year, including more than 50 videos that “speculated on hot and sensitive events in China, attacked the political system, insulted and vilified state officials, seriously damaged the image of the country, and endangered national interests. The tweeted video also constitutes “provocation and disorder” and “causing serious disorder in public places.
Non-political figures can also be arrested if the topic is sensitive
Many netizens were outraged when authorities sentenced an Internet user who spoke on an offshore website to prison, arguing that Twitter is a U.S. social media outlet that is not under Chinese jurisdiction. In an interview with Radio Free Asia on Monday (April 5), Chinese dissident Ji Feng said Chen Shaotian’s case was similar to that of the performance artist “Soul Chaser,” who was sentenced earlier on charges of provocation and nuisance: “He expressed his discontent with reality and the Chinese Communist Party and the authorities in sporadic online messages. A 27-year-old girl in Beijing made a remark, the original words of which I forget, and was detained on March 21.”
Chen Shaotian, a big-truck driver, was reportedly arrested in 2020 after the government closed cities and rural areas to pedestrians and vehicles due to the spread of the Wuhan virus. Chen Shaotian was also banned from WeChat, ShakeYin, and Racer accounts after he “scolded” authorities through social media over the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, the “whistle blower” for the epidemic.
He has no systematic political philosophy and no profound views, he is just unhappy with the reality. There are many people like him. Many people are gradually afraid to speak out, are afraid to speak.”
Pan Shaomin, a legal practitioner in Hebei, told the station that he noticed that netizen Chen Shaotian was sentenced for posting videos flirting with the authorities on an overseas website. He said, “The fact that Chen Shaotian has become an internet sensation shows that the social topics he focused on are popular among the public. Many things that the public dare not say are cursed out by the national cursing brother in a playful and angry way, and people feel pain in their hearts. Therefore, he will become a net star, but the authorities are very afraid of this phenomenon.”
Regulating the current society with performance art offends the authorities
The video posted by Chen Shaotian, in which he expresses his dissatisfaction with the government staff’s handling of the epidemic without naming them, has become a hit with netizens, and the video has been made into cartoons and WeChat emojis, which have been widely circulated by netizens.
Pan Shaomin said that under the regime’s high-handedness, Chen Shaotian’s alternative way of expressing his personal views is the most taboo for the authorities: “It is very taboo for Brother Tian to express himself in this way online and close his account inside the ‘wall’, but he continues to speak out outside the ‘wall The authorities are certainly annoyed that he continues to speak out outside the ‘wall. The fact that he was arrested and sentenced shows that the current word prison is getting more and more intense. Not only sensitive people, but also ordinary people who publish content that the authorities don’t like are subject to a crackdown on speech.”
Beijing-based playwright “Flying Pig Full Circle Lao Li” (real name: Li Guibao) was sentenced to one year in prison in late December last year by the Beijing Haidian District Court for provocation and nuisance for posting an article flirting with pneumonia in Wuhan. Sources said that Li Guibao published an article of about 7,000 words in April last year, the content of which offended the authorities.
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