Chinese LGBT Rights Groups Blocked on Social Media by Beijing Regime

Several accounts of Chinese student groups defending LGBT rights and feminism have been blocked on the popular WeChat app. this Wednesday, sparking calls to protest online.

Pages from WeChat groups, including Gay Pride from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and ColorsWorld from Peking University, were removed and a message appeared instead stating that “content has been blocked and l use of the account has been suspended “..

The post notes that WeChat has received “relevant complaints” about the pages “without giving further details.

Chinese social media platforms often censor content they consider politically sensitive or inappropriate, and previously LGBT content was not allowed to be shown in foreign video and movie streaming apps.

La Zhihe Company, a collective of feminist students from Fudan University in Shanghai who work with sexual minorities also confirmed that their WeChat account has been permanently deleted, in a statement published Wednesday on another social network.

“It is clear that Zhihe’s original account will not be reactivated in the short term,” the organization said in the statement posted on Weibo, without detailing the reasons why it was removed.

Although China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, same-sex marriage is illegal and issues related to the LGBT community are considered sensitive.

Tencent, the owner of WeChat, did not respond to questions from the AFP on blocking these accounts.

WeChat users unaffected by the page lockdown circulated lists of deleted accounts and called for an online protest on Wednesday.

Many of these messages had been deleted at noon on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, last March, a Chinese court ruled that homosexuality could be considered a “mental disorder.”

A court in Jiangsu province (east China), he ruled in favor of an editor who described homosexuality as a “psychological disorder” in an academic textbook.

According to a copy of the appeal decision, issued on February 9, the Suyu Intermediate District Court in Suqian City said the description was due to “Differences in perception” and it was not a factual error, upholding a ruling made in September of last year.

The court ruling sparked a wave of protests in favor of people with this sexual orientation.

“I feel lost, because they didn’t even have a trial, they just handed down the sentence” said the complainant, who uses the pseudonym XiXi.

In 2017, XiXi sued Jinan University Press and a company owned by retailer JD.com for posting and distributing factually incorrect content in a 2013 book on mental health education for students.

(With information from AFP)

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