Earlier this month, China’s new president created a law that criminalizes “online rumors,” jailing people who generate false information that gets shared by more than 5,000 people or re-blogged more than 500 times.
According to the Daily Dot, Chinese police made their first arrest in accordance to this law last week when they took a 16-year-old boy identified as “Yang” into custody.
The boy made a post on Chinese microblogging site weibo last Saturday that criticized the way the police handled a suicide case in Gansu Province.
Yang reportedly posted that police officers attacked onlookers at the scene of the death and even inflicted violence upon some of the deceased man’s relatives.
Yang also claimed that the man didn’t kill himself at all. He said that police beat him to death and staged the suicide as a cover up.
One of these posts was shared over 500 times.
Though five others were fined for posts about the same suicide, only Yang was detained by police.
Police have yet to reveal how long Yang will be detained for.
The Chinese government argued the “online rumor” law was made to minimalize social and economic damage, but many civilians view it as a frightening method of intimidation meant to scare people from exposing the government’s wrongdoings.
“It’s far too easy for something to be reposted 500 times or get 5,000 views,” Reuters quoted one Sina Weibo user as saying. “Who is going to dare say anything now?”
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