Gender in China, a Chinese feminist website, had two of its Sina Weibo accounts deleted, according to its founders and supporters, RFA.org reported.
Women’s rights activists rally to the online organization’s aid, flinging criticisms to what they consider is blatant social media censorship.
Gender in China’s social media editor Xiong Jing believes that the Sina Weibo accounts were removed after the website criticized US president Donald Trump regarding his treatment of women.
“We have had large numbers of posts deleted in the past, but this is the first time we have been completely prevented from posting,” Xiong told RFA in an interview. “The manager at Sina Weibo said we had broken the law, or regulations, and that we were being prevented from posting for 30 days, but they weren’t very specific.”
“We are guessing that it’s because we sent out some tweets calling for a women’s strike action against Trump,” she added.
As a response to the removal of their accounts, Gender in China took to complaining about the censorship using another Sina Weibo account, which was also deleted soon after the post was made.
“We sent out that tweet this morning about the gag order, and then the whole account was deleted,” Xiong said.
According to Ye Haiyan, a prominent artist and feminist activist based in Beijing, the removal of Gender in China’s Sina Weibo accounts are just part of China’s growing campaign against human rights lawyers and human rights activists.
“I saw that Gender in China had come in for a lot of trolling from the 50-cent brigade recently,” Ye said. “I thought then that feminists would be next in line for persecution.” Ye attributed the troll comments from a mass of pro-government commentators, allegedly paid to support the Chinese Communist Party.
“It’s happening in layers. Once they’ve eliminated one area [of civil society activism], they move on to eliminate the next,” Ye said in an interview with RFA.