Ink protest lands woman in custody

SHANGHAI: A woman who live-streamed herself throwing ink onto a picture of Chinese President Xi Jinping has been detained, according to activists who accuse authorities of suppressing speech to protect a “cult of personality” around the country’s leader.

The US-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) activist network said authorities have also taken the woman’s father and a Chinese artist into custody after they sought to publicise her plight.

The woman, who has been identified by activists as 28-year-old Dong Yaoqiong, went live on Twitter on July 4 in a video in which she accused the ruling Communist Party of employing “oppressive brain control”.

In the video, retweeted tens of thousands of times, Ms Dong splashes ink on a poster bearing Mr Xi’s image at a location in Shanghai’s financial district, saying defiantly: “Xi Jinping, I’m right here waiting for you to arrest me”.

CHRD said Ms Dong is believed to have been arrested later that day and that her Twitter account was deleted hours later.

Her final tweet included a photo of several uniformed men outside her apartment.

CHRD said authorities were “suppressing freedom of speech to protect Mr Xi Jinping’s cult of personality”.

Twitter is blocked by China, along with some other major foreign social media sites like Facebook, but can be accessed via easily available censor-evading software.

Chinese authorities swiftly punish those who deface leaders’ images and Communist symbols.

Ms Dong’s defiance comes at a sensitive time especially after Mr Xi strengthened his hold on power late last year.