DECEMBER 31, 2014 12:23 PM December 31, 2014 12:23 pm
The Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, in Brussels on March 22, 2013.Credit Colin Delfosse for The New York Times
Amid growing censorship pressures around the world, Facebook suspended the account of one of China’s most prominent exiled writers after he posted pictures of a streaking anti-government demonstrator.
On Tuesday, the exiled writer, Liao Yiwu, said that he had received a notice from Facebook stating that his account had been temporarily suspended, and that it would be blocked permanently if he continued to violate the site’s rules against nudity.
The move follows Facebook’s decision last week to delete a picture of the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk that had been posted by the Tibetan writer Woeser.
Facebook is facing a delicate balancing act around the world. The social media site is popular among critics of authoritarian countries like China, Russia and Vietnam, but those nations are increasingly demanding that Facebook not be a platform for dissent. Even democracies like India are making broad requests that the site censor content.
The situation is more complex in China, where Facebook is blocked and domestic competitors like Sina Weibo and Tencent’s WeChat are dominant.
The chief executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has begun a small charm offensive in the country in recent months. He traveled to China in October and spoke Mandarin Chinese in front of university students there. In December, he hosted China’s top Internet regulator at his offices in California, where he was seen with a copy of a book by President Xi Jinping.
Facebook officials say that all of this is irrelevant to the case involving Mr. Liao, who lives in exile in Germany.
“Facebook has a pretty simple policy with regard to nudity: We prohibit it,” the company said in a statement. “The individual in question repeatedly posted pictures containing nudity. As a result, consistent with our existing policies and standard operating procedure, we removed the pictures and temporarily blocked the account. Any suggestion that we took action because of politics, philosophy or theoretical business interests is complete nonsense.”
Mr. Liao said the case was not that simple. In an interview at his home in Berlin, the 56-year-old writer said he had covered up the genitalia of the streaker in the photo after people pointed out that it might violate Facebook rules. He cut out a picture of the former Chinese leader Mao Zedong and pasted it over the man’s groin in the photo. His account was suspended several days after doing so.
