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Yang Jia, Cop-killer Online Hero Case Goes On Trial

Yang Jia’s case goes to trial today, after having been postponed for the Olympics. Previously he had been harmonized after having been heroized by many online for walking into a police station in Shanghai last month and killing six cops after what was accepted was an earlier case of injustice and police brutality of which he was rumored to have been on the receiving end.

Tuesday afternoon in China and many bloggers are waiting to hear what the verdict will be, if it even comes today. Writing about it is not working very well, as demonstrated by lawyer and legal blogger Liu Xiaoyuan in his post on his Sina blog, ‘A ban has been sent down on featuring blog posts discussing the Yang Jia case’:

昨天，有外媒采访我，让我谈奥运期间新闻和言论自由问题，我只好实话实说了。在奥运期间，管理部门不屏蔽外媒网站，我们可以自由地去游览，这确实是一大进步。但是，对网络言论的控制比以前更加严格，很多话题不能谈论，如写了这类博文也会被删除。

想不到奥运结束了，网络言论仍然没有放开。昨晚，我获知杨佳一案开庭的消息，立即写了博文发到各个博客，有的博客照样不给放行。我发在凯迪网猫眼看人论坛中的帖子，也被锁定不能予以回复。

今天上午，我又在该网发了谈杨佳案的帖子又遭锁定，网友不能加以评论和回复。

"Yesterday, I was interviewed by some foreign media; they wanted me to talk about issues of press freedom and freedom of speech during the Olympics. During the Olympics, authorities stopped blocking foreign media websites, and we were free to browse them, this is definitely a big step forward. But, controls on internet speech are tighter than they were before, and many things cannot be talked about; even posts like this one will be deleted.

 

What I didn’t expect is that now that the Olympics are over, internet speech still hasn’t be let go. Last night I heard that the Yang Jia case is going to trial, and I immediately posted this out to all my blogs; some of them, as usual, wouldn’t let me post. The thread I posted on the Cat898 BBS? Locked so that no-one can reply.

This morning, another thread I posted about the Yang Jia case got locked down, so netizens couldn’t leave comments or respond."

中午，我给博客网一位熟悉的编辑发短信，希望能推荐一下博文《上海二中法院为何不在网上公布杨佳案开庭消息》。他回复短信称，有禁令。我又发短信询问，是以前的禁令，还是现在的禁令？他回复我说，以前的还在，现在的也有。

有网友将我的文章发到某论坛上，点击后打开不了。

正如《财经网》记者所说的，这一切是早有周密安排的。

"This afternoon, I sent to a text message to a close friend who’s an editor at Bokee, hoping they could feature my post “Why didn’t the Shanghai #2 Intermediate Court put the information about Yang Jia’s trial online>”. He texted back: there’s an order. I texted back to that, asking, ‘is it an old order, or an order now?’ He wrote back: ‘the old one’s still here, and there’s a new one too.’

 

Some netizens reposted my post to a certain BBS, but if you click it, it won’t open.

Just like the Caijing reporter said, this was all carefully planned long ago."

Global Voices: Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society. Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.
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