“I’ve been warned not to talk about it,” the woman wrote, before revealing snippets of the day she says she was arrested for publishing gay erotica.
“I’ll never forget it - being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”
The handle, Pingping Anan Yongfu, is among at least 8 in recent months which have shared accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo of being arrested for publishing gay erotic fiction. As authors recounted their experiences, dozens of lawyers offered pro bono help.
At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.
But .ml communities promise meChina has mote free speech than the West! How is this possible?
/s
To be clear, writing and posting erotica isn’t illegal, its profiting off it that was illegal, which is still fucked, but less of a free speech issue.
It’s really only a matter of degrees as you can sell other things for a profit so why not your literature?
Clearly, the BBC made it all up. Because it contradicts them. /s
Literally the newest top-level comment right now.
You don’t even have to be charged with anything before ICE grabs you off the street at throws you in a van in the US…
Very typical .ml whataboutism. Both things can be bad at the same time. This is not a null sum game.
Can you connect these dots for me?
Nah.
Yeah, unfortunately the US is becoming more and more like China in this regard.
And I assume you wish the US to keep doing that because China is doing that and it’s clearly working?
I’m simply responding to the commenter’s comparison to “the west”. Like, if that’s the game we’re gonna play I think I just scored a point. Both situations are obviously terrible duh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Very USA-Centric of you lol
USA =/= “The West”
Also useless whataboutism. The sign of someone who has no arguments left to defend their beliefs.
Yes it’s fucking horrible, I have the misfortune of living in the US but the same goes for China, North Korea, Russia and I could go on.
Which is true for China as well
Che Guevara, from Desalinas PFP, was also rather homophonic. I wouldn’t make it a point of purity testing. People in the past did things according to their time (not saying its justified).
The .ml crew has enought to criticize today. Big part them being a different flavor of impiralism
Which other word did he sound like?
Wdym?
You accidentally said “homophonic” instead of “homophobic.” A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another but with a different meaning, e.g. “weight” and “wait”
lol those were typos.
This isn’t a purity test. This is me making fun of the tankies on .ml
It’s really weird and kinda reddit-like to see a human rights violation and twist the story to be about some online community.
“some” = the one that’s the basis of and technically closely tied to the one you’re using right now
This isn’t about some online community as much as it is a comment on tankies.
Yes, that’s exactly what they’re talking about and you’re being extremely weird in making it a priority of discussion on something at best tangentially related.
It’s just a straw man writ large because you’re miffed at another online argument you had somewhere else.
We are referring to the staunch defenders of the oppressive system which this thread is about, defenders who are very proactive on lemmy. The fact that you cannot see the relevance is on you.