Police raided the Istanbul offices of LeMan Monday evening and detained the staff members after the publication of what officials claimed was a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, a depiction that is forbidden in the Muslim world. At the same time, a mob laid siege to the building and the surrounding area in Beyoğlu District, chanting pro-shariah law slogans. 

Istanbul prosecutors are investigating six people from the LeMan staff for “publicly demeaning religious values.” Four of the staffers are in custody and two others are wanted but are reportedly not in the country. 

The cartoon, published in the latest edition of the weekly, depicts two men with wings on their backs meeting over the skies of a city being bombed. They greet each other by saying “Assalamu alaikum, I’m Muhammad,” and “Aleichem shalom, I’m Moses,” as they shake hands. LeMan said on X that the man in the cartoon is not the prophet but instead a Muslim man named Muhammad. 

“Turkish authorities shouldn’t fan the flames of religious backlash over a cartoon that LeMan magazine said was not portraying the Islamic prophet,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “The authorities should release the four LeMan staff in custody, cancel the warrants for those abroad, and focus on ensuring their safety.”

Prior depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in cartoons have led to lethal violence and death threats against journalists.

The detained include Doğan Pehlivan, the cartoonist; Cebrail Okçu, graphic designer; Zafer Aknar, news editor; and Ali Yavuz, institutional manager. Tuncay Akgün, the chief editor and publisher, and news editor Aslan Özdemir were also wanted by the authorities. 

Turkish authorities banned the distribution of the latest edition of LeMan and ordered copies to be pulled from newsstands. A court ordered that LeMan’s website and X account be blocked within Turkey.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkey’s cabinet members welcomed the operation in public comments. Some opposition leaders also criticized the cartoon. 

CPJ’s emailed request for comment from the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The @Voice_of_Chonglang channel, which frequently used the #InsultTheBun hashtag referencing Xi's fondness for steamed baozi buns, was deleted from the global video-sharing platform on Oct. 5.

"The consequences of cyberbullying against Xi Jinping," the channel's X account commented ironically on the move, which comes after YouTube deleted a similar channel titled @RutersXiaoFanQi in February.

The woman behind @Voice_of_Chonglang said she had received no warning of the ban, just an email informing her that the channel had seriously or repeatedly violated its cyberbullying policy.

YouTube bans content that "targets someone with prolonged insults or slurs based on their physical traits or protected group status, like age, disability, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or race," according to its help page.

However, the rules make an exception for "debates related to high-profile officials or leaders" and insults made as part of "scripted satire" and "diss tracks."

The channel producer said she had complained to YouTube by email, but that her email was bounced back after five minutes.

She said she could only guess that her channel was deleted for "insulting" Xi Jinping, citing a recent video satirizing Xi, including his notorious claim to have hefted a 200-pound sack of wheat without changing shoulders.

"YouTube didn't notify me which part of my videos had violated the rules, so I thought it must be that ... I was deleted for 'bullying Xi Jinping,'" she said, citing similar action taken against @GFWFrog a while ago.

"My channel probably offended this leader ... The Chinese Communist Party likely had online commentators make repeated complaints," she said.

She added: "I think we should make fun of Xi Jinping."

RFA contacted YouTube about the woman’s claims but had yet to receive a response by the time of publishing.

Satirists vs. 'serious' dissidents

@GFWFrog said satirists are typically more likely to be targeted by malicious reporting by supporters of Beijing than "serious" dissident channels.

"The way YouTube handled things this time was more harsh and less transparent than before," he said. "Clearly, keeping up a glorious, sacred and inviolable image of Xi Jinping is top priority for the lackeys of the Chinese Communist Party."

He cited a string of similar incidents, including a takedown request for one of his own YouTube videos satirizing Xi.

"There are only two possibilities," @GFWFrog said. "One is that YouTube's Chinese content review team has been successfully infiltrated by the Chinese Communist Party, and the other is that [there are issues with] YouTube's reporting and review mechanisms being ... abused by the Chinese Communist Party."

"Both of those [explanations] are totally unacceptable."

'Hunting club' targeted

Last month, a group of gamers calling themselves the "Hunting Club" took to a live stream within the homegrown Chinese multiplayer online battle game Party Animals to call for "one person, one vote to elect the president" of China, and for "the beheading of the traitor-dictator Xi Jinping," as well as "Never forget June 4, 1989," the date of the Tiananmen massacre.

Internet censors quickly pulled the plug on the live stream and banned overseas-based players from making broadcasts.

Similar measures were put in place by the producers of the online game Goose Goose Duck in January after gamers tricked live stream anchors into calling out gamer handles linked to disgraced figures and party leaders.

Hunting Club member Bot-666 said they used an overseas-registered email address to join the game and made the comments to allow the younger generation behind the Great Firewall "hear the voice of freedom."

Another Hunting Club activist, Luo Jiusan EIF00, said: "The cyber prison that the Chinese Communist Party has spent hundreds of billions of dollars and taken such pains to build seems so ridiculous and absurd, when you can hear the words "Behead the dictator Xi Jinping" and "Heaven will destroy the Communist Party" repeated in a live stream. 

"This is what we were aiming for."

Another member, who gave the nickname Brother Duty said the group is now under intense scrutiny by China's cyber police, with some hauled in for questioning by police and three currently incommunicado, believed detained.

"We won't give up despite all of this," the gamer said. "We will continue our activities."

YouTuber Voice_of_Chonglang said in an interview at the time that the #InsultTheBun hashtag is a direct reaction to extreme controls on freedom of speech in Xi's China.

Other accounts suspended

Bot-666 told Radio Free Asia that Twitter had also suspended a large number of accounts that were maliciously reported by supporters of Beijing, also citing the closure of @RutersXiaoFanQi, which was once more in operation on YouTube on Oct. 6.

"[Those bans] and [the] suspension of @Voice_of_Chonglang's channel highlight the Chinese Communist Party’s frequent long-arm tactics targeting anti-communist voices on overseas platforms," Bot-666 said.

"I personally believe that content review mechanisms on these social platforms need to be improved and strengthened to prevent online content from being manipulated by malicious actors funded by the Chinese Communist Party," they said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Yitong Wu for RFA Cantonese.

The RutersXiaoFanQi channel, whose name amalgamates the Chinese word "to humiliate" with that of the news agency Reuters, was unavailable on YouTube at 1300 GMT on Monday.

The takedown comes as Chinese censors grow increasingly concerned about satirical content about Xi Jinping coming from overseas, where students and activists recently demonstrated in solidarity with the "white paper" protests that swept China at the end of 2022, and where social media accounts often post content that would be banned or blocked in China.

It suggests Chinese censors are using YouTube's copyright infringement reporting system to shut down content they find politically unacceptable, according to a fellow satirist.

An Internet Archive snapshot of the page captured on Feb. 10 showed the most recent upload was a spoof video featuring manipulated news footage of Xi and a satirical song questioning the Chinese leader's booksmarts, among other satirical comments.

"The new era is here. We're changing gear and reversing," the song goes, alongside footage of Xi at the Communist Party's 20th National Congress in October.

"How long will it take to get from amending the constitution to flat out calling him emperor?" it says, in a reference to the abolition of presidential term limits in 2018 that paved the way for Xi to take an unprecedented third term in office beginning at the party congress.

"A PhD from Tsinghua University, but still at elementary school level," the lyrics say. "There's nobody else like Xi Jinping in this world."

"Your YouTube account has been shut down following repeated copyright warnings," YouTube told the channel according to a screenshot of the notification displayed in @FragileItemsChronicle's most recent video. 

YouTube didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from RFA.

The channel's producer said Chinese censors are exploiting YouTube's copyright infringement reporting system to shut down content they find politically unacceptable.

"Those Chinese companies must have been instructed by the government to weaponize copyright claims," they said. 

The YouTuber said RutersXiaoFanQi's brand of satire targeting Xi Jinping is known as "Insult the Bun," in a reference to one of Xi's nicknames, Xi Baozi, which went viral on social media and was later banned following the Chinese leader's 2013 visit to a regular dumpling house in Beijing.

They said RutersXiaoFanQi had made a number of appeals to executives at YouTube and Google about bids to shut down the channel using copyright strikes, which included complaints about the use of news footage belonging to state broadcaster CCTV.

The appeals didn't work, despite U.S. copyright law allowing the use of copyright material for the purposes of parody, even in cases where permission has been refused.

In April 2022, YouTube suspended the channel of an Odesa-based Chinese programmer and citizen journalist Wang Jixian, who told Radio Free Asia at the time that his account was likely maliciously reported to the platform by pro-CCP supporters.

"This incident shows us how much the Chinese Communist Party cares about 'insulting the Bun,'" the YouTuber, who asked for anonymity for fear of political reprisals, said. "A key thing about this kind of satire is that it's a low-cost way to demolish the party's authority."

"A short video that makes just three points is obviously going to attract more viewers than a long book about the evil done by the party," they said. "These videos can attack the evil done under the Chinese Communist Party in a funny way, and in a short period of time, which is very harmful to the party's stability maintenance regime."

They said RutersXiaoFanQi was the most influential among the "bun-insulting" channels on YouTube: "They will do everything in their power to shut [it] down."

"My personal guess is that the Chinese Communist Party once again took advantage of loopholes in the YouTube platform terms and conditions to arrange for coordinated reporting [of copyright infringement] by trolls," they said. 

"The world should do something to prevent Beijing from extending its censorship tentacles outside of China."

"We need to expose [their tactics] more fully to the general public and to governments around the world."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Yitong Wu and Chingman for RFA Cantonese.

A jury in California has convicted a former worker at Twitter of spying for Saudi Arabia by providing the kingdom private information about Saudi dissidents. The spying effort led to the arrest, torture and jailing of Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, who ran an anonymous satirical Twitter account. His sister, Areej al-Sadhan, and the lawyer for the family, Jim Walden, are calling on the Biden administration to push for his release. “The brutality of the Saudi officials have no limits,” says Areej al-Sadhan. “Twitter and other social media companies have more than a little responsibility for what’s happening, not just with respect to Abdulrahman’s case and the case of other disappeared Saudi human rights activists and outspoken dissidents, but across a much broader array of misconduct,” says Walden.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Sharing the screenshot, a user named Mahaguru wrote, ‘’Thank you to the Indian government for not succumbing to international pressure and saving us.’’ (archive link)

Giving credit where its due, thank you GoI for not yielding to international pressure and saving us! pic.twitter.com/jvGkeTaYfI

— Mahaguru (@wittymaharia) May 11, 2022

One user shared the viral screenshot, writing, ‘’The Vice President of Pfizer Group has been arrested after a document leaked showing only 12% vaccine efficacy and severe side effects. Thank you to our government that Pfizer was not allowed in India. Remember how Kejriwal, Uddhav Thackeray and Ashok Gehlot openly advocated for the Pfizer vaccine’. ’(archive link)

Rahul Roshan, CEO of pro-BJP propaganda website OpIndia, retweeted a tweet with the same claim. (archive link)

Similarly, many other users also tweeted this screenshot with the same claim.

Fact-check

We noticed that the tweet which has gone viral is from the Twitter handle, ‘@tlloydjones’. This user tweeted an article on May 7 claiming that Pfizer’s VP was arrested. In the same tweet thread, the user wrote, ‘’Surprisingly, this is not ‘reportable’ to any major news outlets. Are you guys awake right now?’’

The viral screenshot shows a link to the website ‘vancouvertimes.org’. When we looked at the About section of the website, we found that it clearly states that the website is for entertainment purposes. The website publishes satirical articles.

In fact, the website also updated the Pzifer article to reflect that it is a satirical piece.

Ultimately, a satirical article about the arrest of Pfizer’s VP was shared by many users believing it to be genuine. False claims have been made before on social media regarding Pfizer’s vaccine as well.

The post Satirical article claiming Pfizer’s VP was arrested believed to be true appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.