A Chinese media outlet that carried a call for Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to resign has been shut down and two of its staff have been detained for more than 100 days, according to a social media post on Friday.
Wujie News Web site in March published an anonymous letter accusing the Chinese leader of a litany of policy mistakes and asking him to step down for the good of the country on the eve of a high-profile political meeting.
The letter, signed “loyal Communist Party members,” was quickly deleted and staff reported a wave of detentions as authorities tried to track down the document’s author.
Wujie also stopped publishing original articles on its Web site.
Media criticism of top leaders is almost unheard of in China, where the press is strictly controlled.
Wujie chief executive officer Ouyang Hongliang (歐陽洪亮) and senior editor Cheng Shengzhong have been “out of contact” for 101 days “assisting relevent departments with an investigation,” Ouyang’s wife, Liu Yankun, said in a letter posted on social media.
She said the news outlet had been “forcibly closed” in March, and that many staff had their benefits such as medical insurance suddenly cut.
“We are suffering from fear and worry,” Liu said, adding she had only been able to speak with her husband “a few times” by telephone.
When contacted by reporters Liu declined to comment, but two former employees at Wujie confirmed the post was genuine and said all the staff at the outlet had lost their jobs.
One former reporter at the outlet who asked not to be named said managing editor Huang Zhijie (黃志傑) was detained in March but later released.
Beijing freelance journalist Jia Jia (賈葭) also went missing shortly after the letter was published, and authorities rounded up the relatives of several dissidents living abroad. Xi has tightened already strict controls on the media since coming to power in 2012, and this year urged state-run outlets to “reflect the will of the party.”
Mainland Chinese media coverage of Xi is typically limited to accounts of meetings or speeches, or gushing with praise.
He has presided over a slowdown in economic growth and a clampdown on civil society that has seen hundreds of people arrested.
The letter, seen by reporters in a cached form, berated him for centralising authority, mishandling the economy and tightening ideological controls.
Beijing-based Wujie — known as “Watching” in English — was founded last year with funding from the Xinjiang Provincial Government.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday vowed that those behind bogus flood control projects would be arrested before Christmas, days after deadly back-to-back typhoons left swathes of the country underwater. Scores of construction firm owners, government officials and lawmakers — including Marcos’ cousin congressman — have been accused of pocketing funds for substandard or so-called “ghost” infrastructure projects. The Philippine Department of Finance has estimated the nation’s economy lost up to 118.5 billion pesos (US$2 billion) since 2023 due to corruption in flood control projects. Criminal cases against most of the people implicated are nearly complete, Marcos told reporters. “We don’t file cases for
Ecuadorans are today to vote on whether to allow the return of foreign military bases and the drafting of a new constitution that could give the country’s president more power. Voters are to decide on the presence of foreign military bases, which have been banned on Ecuadoran soil since 2008. A “yes” vote would likely bring the return of the US military to the Manta air base on the Pacific coast — once a hub for US anti-drug operations. Other questions concern ending public funding for political parties, reducing the number of lawmakers and creating an elected body that would
‘ATTACK ON CIVILIZATION’: The culture ministry released drawings of six missing statues representing the Roman goddess of Venus, the tallest of which was 40cm Investigators believe that the theft of several ancient statues dating back to the Roman era from Syria’s national museum was likely the work of an individual, not an organized gang, officials said on Wednesday. The National Museum of Damascus was closed after the heist was discovered early on Monday. The museum had reopened in January as the country recovers from a 14-year civil war and the fall of the 54-year al-Assad dynasty last year. On Wednesday, a security vehicle was parked outside the main gate of the museum in central Damascus while security guards stood nearby. People were not allowed in because
Tanzanian politicians are in shock over the massacre of hundreds of young protesters during its recent election, insiders told Agence France-Presse, but are too afraid to speak out as a tiny cabal around the president takes control. Gruesome images of dead Tanzanians have flooded the Internet in the wake of the Oct. 29 elections that triggered widespread protests over government repression. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan officially won with 98 percent of the vote, but key opposition leaders were jailed or disqualified. The opposition said that more than 1,000 people were killed as security forces crushed the protests under cover of a five-day
RSS