Chinese woman jailed for tweet

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LONDON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- A Chinese woman was sentenced to a year in labor camp for her satirical tweet that mentioned Japan but was directed at China, a human-rights group says.

On Monday online activist Cheng Jianping was sentenced to a year of "Re-education Through Labor" for "disturbing social order," Amnesty International said Wednesday.

"Sentencing someone to a year in a labor camp, without trial, for simply repeating another person's clearly satirical observation on Twitter demonstrates the level of China's repression of online expression," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's director of the Asia-Pacific region.

Cheng had re-posted her fiance Hua Chunhui's scornful tweet about China's allegedly nationalist demonstrators who had smashed Japanese products protesting an incident between Japan and China's dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands.

Hua's tweet said, "Anti-Japanese demonstrations, smashing Japanese products, that was all done years ago by Guo Quan (an activist and expert on the Nanjing Massacre). It's no new trick. If you really wanted to kick it up a notch, you'd immediately fly to Shanghai to smash the Japanese Expo pavilion."

Cheng re-tweeted adding, "Angry youth, charge!"

Cheng disappeared 10 days later, on what was to be her wedding day, with no one knowing where she had gone until this week when it was revealed she had been arrested and sentenced, Amnesty International said.