Censorship Feeds Criticism of Chinese Poisoning Case

(Corrects description of Sun Weis grandfather in third paragraph.)

Why did Chinas leading social-media platform recently ban users from performing searches for a woman poisoned in 1995? Attempts to answer that question -- and to censor the answers -- have sparked some of the most politically potent online commentary on Chinese leadership, privilege and corruption in recent memory.

The details of the almost two-decade-old case are sordid and murky. In 1995, Zhu Ling was a promising undergraduate at Beijings elite Tsinghua University when she came down with a mysterious illness that was thought to be poisoning via thallium, a toxic element once used as rat poison. This finding soon led to a suspect: Sun Wei, a roommate of Zhus who happened to be one of the few undergraduates at Tsinghua to have access to thallium in a laboratory.

Most important for the politically minded Chinese netizen, Sun Wei was the granddaughter of a high-ranking official who was thought to be close to then-President Jiang Zemin. In 1997, Sun was detained by police for questioning for eight hours but not arrested. Soon after, the case was closed, and Sun reportedly fled to the U.S., where its rumored shes married with kids (enterprising microbloggers have tried to keep tabs).

Meanwhile, Zhu, permanently disabled, lives with two elderly parents ill-suited to care for someone that Hong Kongs South China Morning Post described as a 200-pound, paralyzed, diabetic, almost-blind woman with the mental capacity of a six-year-old.

Over the last month, the tale has re-emerged as a populist cause celebre. The trigger was the early April fatal poisoning of a student at Shanghais Fudan University by another student, which evoked memories of the 1995 incident. Over the course of April, Zhus name became an increasingly popular topic of conversation and a proxy for anger at official privilege. Few offenses inspire Chinese online ire like the use of privilege -- especially by children of those in power -- to avoid the consequences of criminal behavior.

Its not clear that anyone intervened in Zhus case, but that hardly matters in a China accustomed to rumor. Zhus angry and media-savvy supporters -- long-stymied in their efforts to have the investigation reopened -- quickly rallied online support.

On April 29, Zhang Jie, lawyer to Zhu and her family, posted this tweet to Sina Weibo (it has subsequently been deleted):

In traditional Chinese culture we not only say the same rules apply to everyone even if he is a prince, but we also say senior officials have the privilege of avoiding criminal penalties. This kind of contradiction appears in the Zhu Ling case. We want to capture the murderer and convict her (or him) of the crime, but the key fact of this case is that when oral testimony is needed, senior officials have the privilege to avoid it; after the prince breaks the law, the fact is there isnt enough evidence to prove that he violated the law. These unspoken rules for protecting officials have existed in China for thousands of years, and we are challenging them.

That challenge was soon met by Sina Weibos censors, who -- over the past 10 days -- became progressively more aggressive in managing, and censoring, the conversation about Zhu Ling. Its impossible to know for certain whether this was proactive censorship that anticipated government orders or whether it was implemented at the explicit direction of the authorities. But from the standpoint of Sina Weibos users, the government appeared to be involved.

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Censorship Feeds Criticism of Chinese Poisoning Case