China Cracks Down on Jasmine Protest

Chinese authorities are determined not to let Tunisia-style protests take hold. Responding to a call for a “Jasmine Revolution” posted online, authorities detained activists, sent police to the streets, and disconnected some text-messaging services. Protesters were instructed to shout, "We want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness," at a location in Shanghai and 11 other cities. But the turnout was low because the site where the call to protest was posted—a Chinese-language news site called Boxun.com—was attacked by hackers after it posted the call. Boxun.com is censored in China, as are Twitter and Facebook. Anywhere between several dozen and more than 100 activists were detained ahead of the protests, human-rights groups estimate, and searches for “jasmine” were blocked on China’s Twitter-like microblog.