In the northeastern city of Jinan, PFLAG China, the country’s most prominent gay rights group, on Saturday held a support workshop for LGBT people and their parents. Participants chanted slogans including “we have rainbows and courage” on the route, they said.
The event had in fact been planned and approved by local authorities before the Weibo ban was announced, but it took on greater meaning as a result of the crackdown, organizers said in a Weibo post (link in Chinese).”This is the kind of day worth remembering for a lifetime,” they wrote, adding that Weibo shut down the event’s live stream. The crackdown also spurred people to speak out in real life. Hundreds of people participated in a pride run event in Nanjing on Saturday (April 14), a day after Weibo’s announcement of the ban-a public display of activism that is becoming almost extinct in China. Weibo/Jiangsu Tongtian Hundreds of LGBT people participated in a pride run event in Nanjing on April 14. It can’t be changed, and I don’t want to change,” he wrote. In the post, the author wondered why China, as the world’s second-largest economy, “can’t be inclusive of two sexualities.” At the end of the article, he made his Weibo account public, and decided to come out as gay despite long fears of discrimination. In the past few days, a blog post (link in Chinese) with the title translated as “Hello Sina scum, I am gay” went viral on social-networking app WeChat, even though the original post and its reposts have been deleted numerous times. Weibo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the LGBT ban. In an usual move, Weibo then backtracked on its decision, and said in an announcement (link in Chinese) that its clean-up would no longer target any gay content, without offering more details. He wrote,”If I don’t say anything today, there probably won’t be any chance to do so in the future.” One of the most shared posts is from an activist who uploaded a video from a public event where gay people, wearing rainbow-colored eye patches, asked passers-by to give them a hug. Screenshot from Weibo “#IAMGAY We are, what about you”īut Weibo’s crackdown backfired after tens of thousands of users protested against the LGBT ban under the hashtag “I am gay.” Many gay people posted their photos with the hashtag, and sometimes with rainbow emojis.