China’s security agency has arrested Qiu Ziming, former journalist and popular blogger for questioning China’s fake Galwan clash narrative.
According to the South China Morning Post, China had released a propaganda video on Friday, alleging it to be the footage from the Galwan Valley clash in June 2020 where 20 Indian Army soldiers were killed.
The video, released, comes on a day when Beijing for the first time acknowledged that four of its security personnel were also killed in the violent confrontation. It also said that the commander officer was badly injured. In the video the commanding officer was seen walking with open arms towards Indian troops and trying to stop them.
Qiu Ziming (Chou Ziming), who runs an account on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform with 2.4 million followers, wrote a post on the same day, questioning China’s video of the incident. “If you look at it carefully, the four who lost their lives were honored for their ‘rescues.’ If even the people who went to save others were sacrificed, then that must mean there were people who weren’t saved, which means there must be more than four people who died,” he wrote in a Weibo post.
The Nanjing Bureau of Public Security said on Saturday that Qiu Ziming a former reporter of weekly Economic Observer, was charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a vague crime that carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. Qiu had 2.4 million followers on Weibo when he published two posts on Friday that suggested a commander survived the clashes because he was the highest ranking officer there. Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) youth wing, the Communist Youth League’s Central Committee, complained after which Qiu was arrested in Nanjing, China’s eastern Jiangsu province on Friday. A day later, Weibo announced that Qiu’s two accounts had been closed.
State news agency Xinhua accused Qiu of “damaging the reputation of heroes, hurting nationalistic feelings and poisoning patriotic hearts” with his sensational posts.
The state-affiliated media the Global Times accused Qiu and justified action against him, “that the person, surnamed Qiu and known as Labixiaoqiu online, released false information and smeared the four heroes who died and one who was wounded when dealing with the Indian military's illegal trespassing of the Galwan Valley Line of Actual Control on China’s Twitter-like Social media platform Sina Weibo.
Qiu was arrested for stirring up trouble that brought about a severe negative social impact according to a statement issued by the Nanjing Public Security Bureau. Chinese netizens cheered Qiu’s arrest and applauded the swift action of the police.”
“There is a bottom line for public opinion and a bottom line for the law. Anyone who tries to smear any heroic acts should be despised by the people and pay the price,” a People’s Liberation Army affiliated online media warned in a post.
