The following post from Chinese cartoonist Perverted Pepper (变态辣椒), was deleted from Sina Weibo on January 31. Perverted Pepper currently has more than 42,000 followers on Weibo, according to Sina’s numbers. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].


The cartoon in the post shows a crowd of faceless Chinese gazing on and cheering as a couple — representing race-car driver and blogger Han Han, and academic Fang Zhouzi, a well-known exposer of fraud who has accused Han of using a ghostwriter — engages in a brutal fight, which no ones lifts a finger to stop. The V’s on their backs mark them as VIP Sina Weibo users, users with usually higher followings whose accounts have been verified by Sina. These Meanwhile, behind the unseeing crowd, a group of figures represents the grave human rights abuses in China that no one seems to see or care to talk about at all. From left to right: 1. Wu Ying (吴英), the former legal representative for a company in Zhejiang recently sentenced to death for alleged illegal pooling of public deposits (吸收公众存款罪); 2. a Tibet monk, a reference to ongoing religious and ethnic strife in the Tibetan regions of west China; 3. Blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng, who remains under house arrest despite a groundswell of international and domestic pressure late last year; 4. Zhang Haidi (张海迪), a well-known author who is an outspoken disabled-right advocate and herself disabled. The reference here is not clear, but Zhang’s presence might be a reference to a 28-year-old author who has been called “Wuxi’s Zhang Haidi“. Afflicted with paralysis at a young age, Weibo users have reported that the author has been hospitalized. Only one of the VIP Sina Weibo users in the circle of spectators is turning to look at the Chen Guangcheng and the others, as if to say: “Hey, shouldn’t we be paying attention to those stories?”
Perverted Pepper’s original post, which included the cartoon above, follows:

变态辣椒2012 : 2012-01-30 23:42:33 感谢@Amy-Zone 给我灵感 涂鸦作品:无题


NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.


David Bandurski

CMP Director

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