‘Million-strong’ Hong Kong rally against extradition bill is censored in China
Comments censored on Weibo as China’s Great Firewall blocks coverage of events in Hong Kong
It’s less than a week after the 30th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown, and China’s censors are busy at work again.
On June 9, more than one million people took to the streets in Hong Kong, according to event organizers, to rally against an extradition bill that people fear will allow the Chinese government to snatch anybody they want from Hong Kong. It was the largest protest in the city in over a decade, with approximately one in seven people in Hong Kong joining the march.
But in mainland China, where the government has an increasingly tight grip on online information, the event was largely unnoticed.
Mainland news outlets had no major coverage of the event, except for some mentions in state media.
Many in China still use VPNs to get past the Great Firewall for information, though, and some people who saw the news tried to start a discussion. Many of the comments were promptly censored.