Chinese censors quell Covid-19 criticism sparked by fatal crash

Hundreds of social media posts linking the deaths of 27 bus passengers to local strict prevention measures taken down

Microblogging site Weibo said the commenters had jeered at the accident or affected victims and their families

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The remains of the bus which crashed on Sunday while taking residents of Guiyang, in the southern province of Guizhou, to a Covid-19 quarantine facility hundreds of kilometres away, sparking an outpouring of grief and anger on social media. Photo: Weibo

Published: 7:00pm, 21 Sep 2022Updated: 8:22pm, 21 Sep 2022

Censors have erased hundreds of public comments on China’s social media after a fatal bus crash sparked an outpouring of posts, many of them critical of strict Covid-19 prevention measures.

The bus was taking Covid-19 close contacts from their homes in Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, to a quarantine facility 260km (160 miles) away when it crashed soon after 2am on Sunday, killing 27 people.

Within 24 hours of the crash, more than 69,000 comments appeared on Chinese social media and topics related to the issue on microblogging site Weibo had been viewed more than 400 million times.

An apology and the suspension of three officials pending an investigation did little to take the heat out of the discussion, with a number of posts calling for an end to the practice of transporting residents hundreds of kilometres away.

This week, microblogging platform Weibo said more than 652 public posts had been deleted because they “violated the site’s policies” and 108 accounts were suspended.

According to Weibo, the posts had jeered at the accident or negatively affected the victims and their families.

Chinese censors quell Covid-19 criticism sparked by fatal crash

Hundreds of social media posts linking the deaths of 27 bus passengers to local strict prevention measures taken down Microblogging site Weibo said the commenters had jeered at the accident or affected victims and their families

Hundreds of social media posts linking the deaths of 27 bus passengers to local strict prevention measures taken down

Microblogging site Weibo said the commenters had jeered at the accident or affected victims and their families