When Typhoon Nepartak tore through He Zhangze’s coastal hometown of Xiamen, the 18-year-old college student decided to have a closer look at the disaster-affected regions.
Neither the police nor the Chinese state-controlled media took kindly to his investigative adventure, though. He posted his findings, which included reports of dead bodies littering the streets, to social media on July 18; three days later, the state news mouthpiece Xinhua reported that he had been detained by the local police in Fujian Province.
He’s report, posted to popular social media and new sites Weibo and Sina, was removed by censors before long, but local eyewitness accounts and reporting by a human rights NGO confirms that the havoc wreaked by Nepartak—and hushed up by Xinhua—is real.
Initially, He had wanted to travel upstream to the reservoirs to investigate but had to abandon his plan because of tight security, according to a report by the NGO Human Rights in China. The report said that He had discovered that many people drowned when reservoirs in Mingqing County were filled to capacity and flooded.
Xinhua, meanwhile, maintains that He’s findings are merely based on rumors spread by locals with ulterior motives, and that in particular the supposed deaths were “nothing but fake.”
The Chinese regime imposes draconian censorship on online discussion; in the media, there is talk of a “maximum quota“ for the number of reported deaths in accidents and natural disasters. In 2013, a woman surnamed Zhao was detained for posting questions online about details in a murder case.
