Police in Beijing said they had arrested a woman for posting defamatory online comments about athletes and coaches after the women’s singles table tennis final at the Paris Olympics.
The 29-year-old woman, surnamed He, “maliciously fabricated information and openly slandered others,” the Public Security Bureau of Beijing’s Daxing District said in a statement on Sina Weibo on Tuesday.
The statement did not say which athletes and coaches had been targeted, and the case remains under investigation, police said.
Photo: Reuters
However, the arrest followed the women’s singles table tennis finals in Paris on Sunday, police said.
That match saw Chen Meng take gold in an all-China affair against Sun Yingsha.
While Sun received enthusiastic cheers from spectators during the match, Chen was subjected to boos from the crowd and abuse online.
On Sunday, Sina Weibo said it had deleted more than 12,000 posts and banned more than 300 accounts following the incident.
It said in a statement that it had urged users to “keep their focus on the court and comment rationally.”
Among the deleted posts were those attacking Chen, said FreeWeibo, a Web site that monitors comments removed by the platform.
One asked her: “The whole country was hoping for Sun Yingsha to win the women’s singles gold, where’s your sense of justice?”
Some posts that featured an image of a Sun fan in Paris appearing to raise their middle finger toward Chen were also taken down.
By Sunday, the trending hashtag “Don’t let fan culture erode Chinese table tennis” had gained more than 200 million views on Sina Weibo. Many other users criticized fans in the stadium and expressed support for Chen.
“Anyone uninformed would have thought Yingsha was playing against a foreign opponent,” one person wrote.
Ahead of the Games, Sina Weibo said it had deleted 8,200 comments and blocked more than 500 accounts for “abusive and slanderous” comments about athletes, urging users to cheer for all those competing for China in Paris.
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