Beijing: As Chinese ‘internet police’ is working to seize greater authority over thoughts, memories, and words of its web users, a group of volunteers who worked to prevent digital records of the coronavirus outbreak are now targets of the crackdown.
Following the outbreak of deadly coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, citizens turned to Microsoft-owned GitHub as it one of the few major foreign websites that can still be accessed in China. A GitHub page, #2020 nCov memory, initiated by seven volunteers around the world was used it to chronicle personal accounts and news stories of the outbreak. However, it is no longer publicly available.
According to a report by Quartz, in an email, the team behind the page stated that the members decided to make the page private to avoid ‘potential risks.’
Incidentally, Cai Wei, a Beijing-based man who participated in one such project on GitHub was arrested along with his girlfriend by Beijing police on April 19. Reportedly, the couple was accused of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’ a commonly used charge against dissidents in China, Chen Kun, brother of Chen Mei told Quartz.
However, it is still to be revealed if the arrest of the couple is directly linked to their GitHub project, named ‘Terminus2049’, as the police haven't given any comment on the situation.
The purpose of the project- Terminus2049 was to encourage the public to resist ‘404,’ that is the error message displayed when a web page has been deleted or banned by authorities.
Terminus2049 had also preserved a critique (link in Chinese) targeting the Chinese leader Xi Jinping penned by an outspoken professor Xu Zhangrun, where he attacked Beijing’s social controls and censorship. Soon after publishing the piece, Xu was reportedly placed under house arrest and his account was suspended on WeChat.
Along with GitHub volunteers, three journalists have disappeared since February while reporting from Wuhan. Among them, the whereabouts of citizen journalists Chen Qiushi and Fan Bin remain unknown and only Li Zehua, a former employee of the state broadcaster recently resurfaced, and said he had been detained and was placed under quarantine.
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