The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online.
State Council Information Office: All websites immediately delete content related to the 17-year-old Uyghur who was shot and killed by police after running a red light in Aksu, Xinjiang. Also delete photos and news related to the community action that followed. The term “Aksu 17-year-old” is temporarily prohibited from Weibo. (April 14, 2014)
国信办：各网站立即删除有关新疆阿克苏17岁维吾尔少年闯红灯被枪杀以及相关群体事件的图片和信息。请将“阿克苏 17岁” 暂设为微博禁发词。
Last weekend, police shot dead a 17-year-old Uyghur high school student and seriously injured his two passengers after they ran a red light on a motorcycle. Radio Free Asia reports that “mammoth protests” erupted last weekend in response to the police shooting, which were eventually quelled by a “brutal” security crackdown. The following pictures, along with many others and much netizen commentary [zh], have been deleted from Sina Weibo:
Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to these instructions as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.”
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.
