Fang Hong: Man in the“A Pile of Shit” Microblog RTL Case

• Author: China Law Digest

Fang Hong (net name Fang Zhusun), 49 years old, is a retired civil servant of Chongqing Fuling District Forestry Bureau. Now a prominent internet critic “through the Blog and Microblog which both are Used by Citizens for Freedom of Speech”, he has been shortlisted in 2009 organized by the official “Top Ten Excellent Intellectuals Online in Chongqing” 20 candidates.

On April 21, 2011, Fang wrote a microblog about a joke of 58 Chinese characters in Tencent Weibo which made fun of Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun, because he was discontented with the Beijing lawyer Li Zhuang being sentenced to 18 months in Chongqing. On April 28, Chongqing Committee for Reeducation through Labor maintained that Fang spread rumors and disturbed the social order, then sentence him I year RTL. Fang’s son Fang Di was sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment 14 months by Harboring Others Who Take Drugs for searching a lawyer for help, and he is in prison now. An netizen said ironically, Fang Hong was the highest remuneration writer in the world; he had been a detention for one year, with an average value of 6.3 days freedom for each word of total 58 words he wrote.

Fang Hong said that their daily schedule was to produce Christmas lamps exported to Europe, especially Germany, during the time of being...