China tweets go silent

The once lively and vivid Twitter accounts of some of China’s best known social and political critics have gone silent in recent weeks, amid an ongoing clampdown and arrests following calls for a Jasmine Revolution here last month.

Though barred in China, Twitter is accessible here through a VPN (most of the time) and had become a popular platform for critics, lawyers and rights advocates to speak out, often with surprising candor.

Since the calls for mass protest began in February, however, many of the most prevalent voices in the Chinese tweeting community – most with many thousands of followers – have been quieted by force or intimidation. Among them are rights lawyers like Teng Biao who has gone missing, and bloggers like Ran Yunfei who was arrested on charges of inciting subversion of the state.

Some who haven’t been arrested or detained have quietly moved their online voices elsewhere as concerns mount over whether tweets will be used as evidence in subversion trials.