China: Journalist who asked US to 'tear down' China's censorship jailed

On January 8, Taipei arrested Tencent Finance reporter Zhang Jialong and sentenced him to one and a half years in prison for “disturbing the peace”. The Chinese government critic was held in police custody for more than 17 months according to sources of Taiwan news. He was on the radar of Chinese law enforcement for organizing pro-democracy rallies and advocating for human rights. The journalist was arrested by the security forces that deemed him ‘dangerous’ on charges of dismantling the public order in Beijing, Chinese human rights-related daily Weiquan Wang reported. 

In 2014, Zhang met with US Secretary of State John Kerry to push for Internet freedom in China and asked the US to assist the Chinese dissidents in “tearing down the great Internet firewall”. After the meeting, China’s Internet giant Tencent had fired the Journalist for appealing to the US government to work around the "Great Firewall of China", which prohibited the use of Facebook and Twitter in China. Tencent dismissed Zhang for "leaking confidential data regarding businesses and other sensitive information”, according to China’s state-run agencies. The communist nation further tightened the censors for the internet asking the internet firms to take down ‘sensitive’ content from the web critical of the Communist Party. Zhang was detained once in 2019 for sharing video footage of a singer wherein a man featured wearing a ‘Free Tibet’ scarf. 

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Activist Joshua Wong arrested

Earlier in another Chinese government's crackdown, Hong Kong Police detained the democracy campaigner Joshua Wong under the city’s new national security law, a senior police source told agencies. More than 53 prominent figures, including a US citizen, that voice dissident against the PRC and Hong Kong government were arrested by the police officers in a national crackdown on charges of “subversion”. Wong was sentenced to 13 and a half months in prison for organizing the democracy protests across the semi-autonomous city and was arrested by the Hing Kong police from Shek Pik Prison as Beijing tightened control over the territory, a police officer told sources of AP. 

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(Image Credit: Chinese Human Rights Defenders Site)