A coalition of press freedom and human rights NGOs, headed by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Amnesty International, has called for the Chinese regime to guarantee the full freedom of journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin, a leading figure in China's #MeToo movement. While she is due to be released in the coming days, she is likely to face surveillance and travel restrictions.
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On Friday, 18 September 2026, journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin will complete her prison sentence, but will still be deprived of her political rights, which bars her from practising journalism and travelling abroad, and subjects her to ongoing surveillance by the authorities. The coalition of 60 NGOs is calling on the Chinese authorities to guarantee her immediate release and to ensure that, once released, she can continue her journalism free from surveillance, harassment, retaliation, or any other restrictions.
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“After years of relentless harassment and abuse, it is time for the Chinese authorities to end their persecution of Sophia Huang Xueqin and restore her full freedom," says Aleksandra Bielakowska, Advocacy Manager at RSF Asia-Pacific
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Sophia Huang Xueqin's case exemplifies the Chinese regime's persecution of independent journalism. Authorities often persecute journalists after they have completed their sentences, as illustrated by the case of Zhang Zhan. After serving an initial four-year prison term, this journalist, who covered the outbreak of COVID-19, whose fate and whereabouts remained unknown following the completion of her sentence in 2024. Thanks to international mobilisation, she was released in May 2024, before being arrested again in August 2024, just a few months later, on fabricated charges. She was then sentenced to four more years in prison.
China is the world’s largest jailer of journalists, with 120 currently detained, and ranks 178th out of 180 countries and territories in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index.
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Where are the Thankies now?
I don't really see why this is particularly surprising. She was punished for covering the Hong Kong protests against being able to try a murderer that fled into Hong Kong on the mainland in an explicitly positive manner, and was an advocate for bourgeois liberalism. She is also a liberal feminist, rather than a Marxist feminist. The issue isn't the feminism at all, it's that she worked to subvert China's socialist system in a manner that strengthens the capitalist class, which desperately wishes to wrest control of China from the CPC.
The fact that China has a capitalist class is why they take these kinds of reporting so seriously. Western NGOs will try to frame this as an anti-feminist attack and an attack on "free speech," but it's an attack on specific speech, that being pro-capitalist speech. She essentially criticizes China from the right politically and economically, while criticizing China from the left socially, and western media magnifies the least important part of this entire situation: the feminism, which the CPC and Sophie Huang are more aligned on than not.
This same story, with different people pushing for liberalism each time, has played out dozens if not hundreds of times. The west identifies figures that oppose China from the right but perhaps are more socially progressive than the rest of China, and tries to frame it as being against the progressivism rather than the liberalism. China does not pretend to have or respect "free speech," which doesn't really exist anywhere. It's frankly a boring and routine demonstration, the west always put phrases like "organizing against the socialist state" in scary quotation marks, when it's consistent and clear that that really is the reason.
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml
Not that I think you will listen, but do yourself a favor and stay away from wherever you get this stuff.
Even western state-affilated media like BBC affirms what I said:
Clear as day, she was jailed for subversion against the state, scare quotes and all.
RSF also explains that she joined Southern Metropolis Weekly, a pro-liberal reform news outlet, in 2015. It was here that she earned her pro-liberal reform record, and first received state condemnation for her coverage of the Hong Kong protests, also acknowledged here by RSF.
RSF constantly refers to her as the "#MeToo activist," but the actual target is her support for capitalists taking control of society from the working classes. She's a liberal feminist, being targeted for being a liberal, not for being a feminist.
Are you saying I shouldn't read western media, or that I should stop reading western media critically, with a Marxist viewpoint?