William Yang Profile picture
Senior analyst, Northeast Asia for @crisisgroup. Former foreign correspondent covering #China, #Taiwan and the Indo Pacific. e-mail: wyang@crisisgroup.org

Jul 21, 2020, 6 tweets

Latest: @Horror_Zoo has been living in Australia since 2019, where she attended quite a few protests supporting #HongKong's pro-democracy movement and she also organized several anti-government rallies. She thought she'd be relatively safe from #Beijing's surveillance, ...

... but at the end of April, she received a call from her father on WeChat, and when she picked up, she realized her father was at the local police station in Hefei City, Anhuei province. A local policeman surnamed Hu took over the phone and began to question her about ...

... a @Twitter account that has been posting content mocking the Chinese president #XiJinping. The police man demanded that she handed in the login credentials of the Twitter account and asked her to return to #China immediately.

Instead of giving in to pressure from home, she decided to publicize the video of their exchanges, knowing this might increase the risk against her and her family back in #China. She shared her experience during the annual online commemoration event for #JuneFourth, ...

... and hours after the event, the local police screenshot the speech she gave during the event and shared it with her father. Her father began to pressure her to return to #China as well, which made her feel like the power of the government has gotten in the way between her ...

... and her family. She decided to reveal all details of the surveillance and threats that she's been receiving from her hometown in #China, hoping the international community will see the real capability of #Beijing's surveillance state.

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