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April 28, 2020 11:20 pm

Chinese Internet Users Who Uploaded Coronavirus Memories To GitHub Have Been Arrested

schwit1 shares a report from Quartz: A group of volunteers in China who worked to prevent digital records of the coronavirus outbreak from being scrubbed by censors are now targets of a crackdown. Cai Wei, a Beijing-based man who participated in one such project on GitHub, the software development website, was arrested together with his girlfriend by Beijing police on April 19. The couple were accused of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," a commonly used charge against dissidents in China, according to Chen Kun, the brother of Chen Mei, another volunteer involved with the project. Chen Mei has been missing since that same day. On April 24, the couple's families received a police notice that informed them of the charge, and said the two have been put under "residential surveillance at a designated place." There is still no information about Chen Mei, said his brother. It is unclear whether the arrest of the couple and the disappearance of Chen are directly linked to their GitHub project, named "Terminus2049." Chinese citizens had been turning to Microsoft-owned GitHub after the outbreak began, as it remains one of the few major foreign websites that can still be accessed in China. Now, volunteers linked to these GitHub pages are facing the growing risk of reprisals from authorities. Another GitHub page, #2020 nCov memory, which was initiated by seven volunteers around the world to chronicle personal accounts and news stories of the outbreak, is no longer publicly available. The team behind #2020 nCov memory said in an email to Quartz that they will suspend operation of the page and collection of submissions due to the "situation" in China, and that they hope to see "sunshine tomorrow."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/2_azFLbpjt8/chinese-internet-users-who-uploaded-coronavirus-memories-to-github-have-been-arrested

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