Chinese Woman Jailed Over Single Tweet

Cheng Jianping is to spend 1 year in a labor camp
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 18, 2010 11:07 AM CST
Chinese Woman Jailed Over Single Tweet
The offending tweet.   (Twitter)

A single tweet, intended as a joke, has landed a 46-year-old Chinese woman in a labor camp for a year. Cheng Jianping (aka wangyi09) retweeted a tweet sent by her fiance during last month's demonstrations against Japan. His tweet suggested protesters smash Japan's pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. In her retweet, the social activist tacked on the words "Charge, angry youth"—in jest, she says.

Authorities say she was disrupting social order, Mashable reports, and sentenced her to a year of "re-education" in the Shibali River women’s labor camp, where her fiance says she has begun a hunger strike in protest of her sentence. (Click here for another story on China's harsh crackdown on tweeters.)

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