Amnesty blasts China for jailing woman for year in labour camp over satirical tweet

Beijing, Nov 19(ANI): A 46-year-old Chinese woman has been sentenced to a year in labour camp for posting a satirical 'anti-Japanese' message on Twitter.

It is believed to be the harshest sentence related to a tweet on the microblogging website, which is banned in China, but is widely accessed and used particularly by human rights defenders and their supporters, News.com.au reports.

Cheng Jianping, an online activist, was arrested on October 28 for retweeting a sarcastic message on her Twitter account 'wangyi09.

The offending tweet was originally posted by her fiance Hua Chunhui in the midst of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China last month.

The tweet had urged the protesters to smash Japan's pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, while Cheng retweeted it, adding the words, "Charge, angry youth".

Cheng was convicted of "disturbing social order" by a court in the central province of Henan on Monday.

Meanwhile, human rights group Amnesty International said that the case showed China's "repression" of Internet users.

"Sentencing someone to a year in a labour camp for simply repeating another person's clearly satirical observation on Twitter demonstrates the level of China's repression of online expression," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's director for the Asia-Pacific. (ANI)