Weibo accounts shut over comments criticising young Chinese victim of Ethiopian Airlines crash
- After learning that a 22-year-old student travelling to Kenya came from a well-to-do family, some posted harshly judgmental comments online
Regulators of Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging service, shut down several accounts on Tuesday after for comments attacking a young woman who died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.
“We received reports from users that there were contents under the Weibo of an aeroplane crash victim that attacked her,” a post on the official Weibo regulators’ account said. “We have checked and closed down [several accounts] that attacked personally and viciously. Please respect the deceased and discuss rationally.”
The crash took place on Sunday, minutes after a Boeing 737 MAX 8 took off from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, bound for Nairobi, Kenya. All eight crew members and 149 passengers aboard were killed, including tourists, business travellers and United Nations staff.
Eight of the passengers were Chinese, including one from Hong Kong. In the past few days, one particular victim caught the eye of Chinese internet users: a 22-year-old college student from east China's Zhejiang province who reportedly was on a trip to see wild animals in Nairobi.
The online community soon found her Weibo page and started posting comments on it. At first there were notes of condolences, then some discovered that the photos she posted online showed she came from a well-to-do family.