The hundreds following amoiist on Twitter were used to his stream of messages. But they ended abruptly with two terse updates early on Thursday morning.
? have been arrested by Mawei police, SOS?he wrote. Then shortly afterwards: ?ls help me, I grasp the phone during police sleep.?br />
His followers quickly passed on his plea to other Twitterers.
But since then there has been silence from amoiist ?also known as Peter Guo, or Guo Bofeng ?who is apparently the latest Internet user in China to be caught up in an inquiry that began with claims of defamation but that police now say involves ?tate secrecy issues.?br />
DETENTIONS
As many as seven bloggers have been detained over claims that a 25-year-old woman, Yan 茄iaoling, had been gang-raped and murdered. It was further alleged that the man responsible was connected to local authorities in her city in Fujian Province.
Officials dismissed the stories, which first surfaced late last month and insisted Yan had suffered a hemorrhage caused by an ectopic pregnancy.
They turned their attention to tracking down those they suspected were responsible for the stories.
Global Voices Online said Guo posted an interview with Yan? mother in which she repeated the claims and accused local authorities of a cover-up.
An employee at Mawei police station said: ?hese cases are in the process of investigation ... We will release information if there is progress.?br />
The case is testament to the growing ability of Chinese citizens to share information through the Internet and to the restrictions on those who do.
In a recent interview over the government? Green Dam censorship program, Guo said: ?he significance of internet in China is huge. It can? change the current situation in China right away, but it has deeply influenced China.?br />
?ROUBLEMAKER?/strong>
Guo, who described himself on Twitter as ? troublemaker in Amoy [Xiamen], living with character sales,?is reportedly a professional interpreter.
His two calls for help were in English, although he generally uses Chinese.
He often blogs and tweets about current affairs and internet censorship and has more than 1,500 Twitter followers.
A message posted several hours before his pleas read: ?eter Guo, one of the twitterers in China, originally from the Fujian countryside, not a famous blogger; people called him amoiist, good character, young, handsome.?br />
Liu Xiaoyuan, who represents another detained blogger, You Jingyou, said lawyers had been told they could not meet their clients because the case involved ?tate secrets.?br />
Twitter is blocked in China but many in the country still tweet through a variety of means.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the