SANTIAGO, CHILE – NOVEMBER 22: President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping talks during a meeting in the Patio de Las Camelias at Palacio de La Moneda on November 22, 2016, Santiago, Chile. (Photo by Sebastián Vivallo Oñate/Agencia Makro/LatinContent/Getty Images)
There has been a rise in domestic social media giving platform to voices challenging the government-sponsored news despite the attempts by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to curb freedom of expression, right to information, association and religion in Tibet, as ANI reported.
The CCP censors the internet and maintains intensive surveillance apparatus in the form of facial recognition technology and Global Positioning System (GPS) coordination in its occupied territories including Tibet, East Turkistan (Xinjiang), and Southern Mongolian (Inner Mongolia). With the aim to control the “digital ecosystem”, the social media accounts linked to the CCP propaganda campaign are being used to spread disinformation on social media such as Twitter, Facebook and others. They have been used to promote content attacking critics of the Chinese government and to spread conspiracy theories blaming the US for waging a biological war against China as reported by ANI.
Meanwhile, the government has blocked websites run by human rights groups, foreign media, Google search engine and social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
A series of images and videos of 156 Self Immolators inside Tibet were sent through social media, the Taiwanese media outlet informed. During the coronavirus pandemic information on personal accounts of life under lockdown was shared on social media. Besides, intensive discussions were leaked with images and videos exposing high ranking officials of their mismanagement, lack of transparency and accountability. With the aim to muzzle the voices of Tibetans, the CCP this year arrested 10 Tibetans in Lhasa for spreading ‘rumors’ about the coronavirus outbreak on March 12 on WeChat, as reported by ANI.
Rise of Digital Authoritarianism
4. By online campaigns.
Literally hundreds of fake accounts and some of real persons, all handled by Chinese state funded Wumaos, manipulate the social media to sell the #CCP‘s religious front against the #DalaiLama and the #Tibetan #Buddhism:
the #Shugden cult.#Tibet#Rangzen pic.twitter.com/sT4WTXV8xU— Ichnaie (@Ichnaie) November 22, 2018
New media in Tibet is dominated by Chinese, whilst traditional media was dominated by Tibetan and minority languages. The only new media where minority languages appear is social media. https://t.co/DULiNQdnwf #IMLD2018 #linguisticdiversity #multilingualism #Tibet pic.twitter.com/GLTpKIUWZK
— Dr. Gerald Roche (@GJosephRoche) February 21, 2018
Edited by: Sakshi Kaithwas
With inputs from ANI