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Chinese blogger Qiu Ziming charged over ‘malicious’ India border casualty posts
- Qiu accused of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ for poking fun at commander and questioning death toll
- Nanjing police say they acted after reports from the public
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Zhuang Pinghuiin Beijing
Police in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing have detained a popular blogger over social media posts that authorities say demeaned military casualties of a border clash with India.
The Nanjing Bureau of Public Security said on Saturday that Qiu Ziming, 38, was charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, a vague crime that carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
Qiu, a former reporter with the weekly Economic Observer, had 2.5 million followers on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo when he published two posts on Friday that suggested a commander survived the clashes because he was the highest ranking officer there.
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He also suggested that more Chinese soldiers might have been killed in the conflict that those disclosed by the authorities.
01:25
China-India border clash in June left four PLA troops dead and one injured, report says
China-India border clash in June left four PLA troops dead and one injured, report says
On Friday, the Chinese military ended its months-long silence to say that four soldiers – Chen Hongjun, 33, Xiao Siyuan, 24, Wang Zhuoran, 24 and Chen Xiangrong, 18 – were killed in the conflict in the Galwan Valley in June. Their commanding officer Qi Fabao, 41, was badly wounded.
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