Coronavirus: Xinjiang authorities investigate 3 men over ‘malicious’ online comments

Inquiry comes after a State Council live-streamed press conference was ‘flooded’ with comments in support of Urumqi
City has been under strict Covid control measures since August

Coronavirus China

Guo Rui

Published: 7:46pm, 15 Nov 2022

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Three men in Xinjiang were being investigated by police after live-streaming sites on social media were flooded with comments about Covid-19 controls, the region’s internet regulator said on Monday.

The “maliciously flooded comments” were posted during a press conference held by the State Council’s Covid-19 response authorities on Saturday, according to a statement by the Xinjiang Cyberspace Administration.

“People of all ethnic groups responded positively to do their best in Covid-19 control, but individual internet users disturbed the public order on the internet by maliciously flooding the screen and causing a bad social impact,” the statement said.

The statement did not give details about the “malicious” comments, except that one of them repeated the word “Urumqi” – usually an appeal to call attention to the strict Covid control measures in the city, which has been under lockdown since early August, with hundreds of local infections recorded each day.

According to the statement, a 41-year-old man from Kashgar, surnamed Li, obtained the live-streaming and press conference schedules of several news media accounts and published them on Douyin – TikTok in China – and then used short videos to incite others to “maliciously flood the screen during the live streaming”.

Another man surnamed Huang, 28, was reported for flooding a live-streaming site with the word “Urumqi”, and for spreading screenshots of the comments in a short video.

The third man under investigation was a 36-year-old Urumqi man surnamed Li, who allegedly recorded the comments on video and then incited others to imitate them on the video sharing platform.

The three men were accused of disrupting public order on the internet and causing adverse social impact. Xinjiang authorities also offered rewards to other internet users who reported illegal and harmful content online.

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Beijing has adopted an increasingly heavy-handed approach to controlling online comments that criticise the government’s strict zero-Covid policy, which has been imposed for three years. Xinjiang authorities have shown even less tolerance.

In March, days before the massive lockdown in Shanghai, several internet users were arrested for spreading news about the impending closure, even though Shanghai entered a nearly three-month lockdown soon afterward.

In September, another internet user was detained for “rumours” about an impending closure of Chengdu on the eve of the city’s lockdown.

In June 2021, a woman surnamed Huang was detained by Shenzhen police for two days for posting on Weibo – a Twitter-like platform – that a Covid-19 case had been confirmed in Huaqiangbei district and that mass testing would be conducted.

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