Name: China bans Clubhouse app as thousands share stories about Xinjiang and Tiananmen Square - ABC News
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China bans Clubhouse app as thousands share stories about Xinjiang and Tiananmen Square - ABC News

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China bans Clubhouse app as thousands share stories about Xinjiang and Tiananmen SquareShareIt was an incredible moment: a Chinese woman delivering an emotional public apology to a woman from the country's oppressed Uyghur minority. I was one of more than 1,000 people there to witness it.It was last Sunday morning. I tuned into a chatroom on the new social media app Clubhouse — an invite-only audio-chat platform that can connect up to 5,000 speakers and listeners in a virtual room.A Uyghur woman told listeners her parents' story of being Then a young woman, who said she was a teenager living elsewhere in the mainland, broke her silence.The teenager broke down in tears and couldn't continue. The only word that I could hear her say clearly was "sorry". She apologised to the Uyghur speaker — not only for what they had experienced, but also for her inability to help.It was my first time listening to a large-scale public exchange between ordinary mainland Chinese people and Uyghur groups. What made it more extraordinary was they cried together, and told each other that they should stand in solidarity.For the next few hours, diverse voices from Xinjiang were heard by thousands of listeners. Han-Chinese residents — the majority ethnic group in China — from the region spoke out about what they knew about the re-education camps. Beijing has repeatedly said&nbsp;the facilities are vocational centres or&nbsp;.People who spoke in the chatroom said they were students, architects, lawyers, and even more surprisingly — one person claimed to be a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member who had visited a camp in the past.As they were discussing the same topics from different perspectives, I shed tears of my own. Of course, there were confrontations about the controversial topic but, for nearly 12 hours, one speaker after another, there was a strong sense of reconciliation between the two ethnic groups in the room.It was the first time I've witnessed a discussion from China uncensored by Beijing.The app soon attracted tens of thousands of tech-savvy netizens from Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China.However, on Monday the inevitable happened. The Chinese censors acted and soon many mainland China users were logged out of the app and couldn't log back on.Halmurat Harri is a doctor in Finland who has helped compile testimonies from other Uyghurs in exile about loved ones thought to be in China's internment camps. He was one of the moderators of the group, but also shared his own experiences and answered questions for people who heard about the situation in Xinjiang for the first time.Mr Harri said his parents were detained from 2017 to late 2018. He said conversations held in the room were "emotional" and "shocking"."I never thought this could happen so fast … despite the risk," Mr Harri told the ABC."This is the first time [I heard] … Chinese speakers say 'I am Han-Chinese and I am so sorry. I express my sympathy and my solidarity'."I was shocked, in a very good way… I heard that [over] an hour, over and over again from so many Chinese people from all over the world."Mr Harri started his campaign on social media when his parents went missing. He has been trying to collect testimonies and maintain a list of detainees, in order to demand answers from Beijing.After he told the harrowing story of looking for his parents, he received dozens of messages via Instagram and Twitter, showing support for his activism."They say 'please don't blame us. We are on your side'," Mr Harris said."This will be remembered." Launched in April last year, Clubhouse is currently only available on Apple's iOS system and has grown slowly through its invite-only mechanism.Every user is allowed to invite two other people when they successfully sign up for an account. The app has gained a large number of users in recent weeks, after the appearance of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg on the platform.Users can listen and speak to others in a live chat room, but cannot send or receive messages.The platform, which has reportedly been downloaded at least 2 million times, has rapidly gained popularity in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.While the app appears to have given some a taste of their long-lost freedom of speech, nationalistic state-owned&nbsp;tabloid Global Times on Monday published a story alleging the app was not a "free speech heaven".It said Chinese mainland users found political discussions on the app to "often be one-sided and pro-China voices can be easily suppressed".The state media outlet cited one man's experience of joining a Taiwan discussion only to find that people "simply repeated their own opinions, rather than discuss or debate them critically."But for many young people from China, it was the first time they were able to discuss sensitive issues openly, from the Tiananmen Square massacre to Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement, to the cross-strait relations between China and Taiwan.It wasn't only about politics. They had open talks about gender and sexuality, while sharing reflections on China's suppression on press freedom and internet censorship.While some expressed how they cherished every moment of listening and speaking in different rooms, others were worried that the app would be censored. Some said they didn't want to sleep because they were worried the app would be banned the next day, while others said their belief in the Government had "collapsed". Taiwanese blogger and citizen journalist Zhou Shuguang, known as Zuola, has been moderating his chat room with help from volunteers around the world.A decade ago, Mr Zhou moved from mainland China to Taiwan and gained his citizenship last year. While China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province, Taipei considers itself independent.On Tuesday afternoon, Mr Zhou was hosting a public interview with a representative from Amnesty International on the app. "I can tell the excitement of expressing freely after living under suppression and censorship," Mr Zhou told the ABC."During these days, people from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other countries really had peaceful and rational talks."In one popular chatroom, Beijing residents shared their experiences during the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. In another, people who said they were students and activists described their experiences of being monitored and visited by police.I was one of the listeners in the Tiananmen chatroom when China's censorship apparatus went into action.Hundreds of users dropped off, and they all appeared to be from chatrooms discussing China-related issues.While some initially thought it was due to bugs on the platform, some users who returned to the room said they were able to log on by using their Virtual Private Network (VPN)."Without the Great Firewall, people who understand the same language talk freely and [virtually] hugged each other," Mr Zhou told the ABC after the app was censored by Beijing."But in an instant, the firewall was back in their way."The ABC has approached China's Foreign Ministry and Clubhouse for comment.9 Feb 20219 Feb 2021Tue 9 Feb 2021 at 6:59pm, 9 Feb 20219 Feb 2021Tue 9 Feb 2021 at 9:43pmMore on:

China bans Clubhouse app as thousands share stories about Xinjiang and Tiananmen SquareShareIt was an incredible moment: a Chinese woman delivering an emotional public apology to a woman from the country's oppressed Uyghur minority. I was one of more than 1,000 people there to witness it.It was last Sunday morning. I tuned into a chatroom on the new social media app Clubhouse — an invite-only audio-chat platform that can connect up to 5,000 speakers and listeners in a virtual room.A Uyghur woman told listeners her parents' story of being Then a young woman, who said she was a teenager...

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China bans Clubhouse app as thousands share stories about Xinjiang and Tiananmen Square - ABC News

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