At least six have died in a stabbing rampage that started with an altercation at a grocery store in Changsha, Hunan. (小凡好摄/Weibo)
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The issuing government agency has been omitted to protect the source.
Urgent Notice:
(1) You may only use authoritative, standard sources when covering the knifing incident in Changsha. Do not comment or hype the story, and do not send reporters to investigate. Filter online discussion of the issue.(2) Take care to delete the article by Zhang Lifan and Pu Zhiqiang, “On Respecting the Wishes of the Dead; Proposal to Cremate Mao Zedong’s Remains and Rebury Him.” Prevent related content from spreading online.
(3) All websites must cease republishing the following articles. Please remove them if they have already been republished: “Large-Scale Shuttering of Tencent WeChat Accounts“; “1200 Small Towns in Germany Fly ‘Free Tibet’ Flags” from the Global Times; “Foreign Minister Wang Yi Meets with Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister[, Thanks Vietnam for Help in Search for Malaysian Flight]” from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and “Why Cutting Short a Provincial Secretary’s Speech Wins Praise” from the Guizhou Daily.
(4) Websites must not hype the article “Zhou Qiang: Courts Must Dare to Persist, Take Responsibility.” Do not change the headline. Interactive sites must prohibit accusatory commentary. (March 13, 2014)
紧急通知：1，对长沙砍人事件只可以使用权威规范信息源，不评论，不炒作，不派记者采访，对网上评论进行过滤。2，注意删除章立凡，浦志强《关于尊重逝者生前志愿 火化毛泽东遗体实施迁葬的提案》一文，防止相关内容在网上传播。3，以下文章各网站不要继续转发，已转发的请检查删除：《腾讯微信被大规模封号》，环球时报 《德1200个小城镇升起“藏独”旗帜》，外交部《王毅外长会见越南副外长[：感谢越方对马航事件的帮助]》，贵州日报《打断省委书记发言为何赢得赞声一片》。4，各网站不要炒作《周强：法院要敢于坚持敢于担当》，文章发表不得修改标题，互动环节禁止攻击性评论。
Zhou Qiang, President of the Supreme People’s Court, told a delegation in Hunan that “the courts must dare to persist and dare to take responsibility” (法院要敢于坚持敢于担当) when dealing with “sensitive” cases. Zhou brought up the example of Xia Junfeng, a street peddler who was executed last year for killing two city management officials (chengguan) in 2009, saying that “those who would not have killed Xia Junfeng are very dangerous” (不杀夏俊峰这种人就非常危险), the Jinghua Times reports [zh].
CDT collects directives from a variety of sources and checks them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation.
Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date on CDT Chinese is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source.
