Hillary Clinton tweeted her support yesterday for the #FreeBeijing20Five, a group of five women’s rights activists currently under arrest in China for provoking “social instability.”
The detention of women's activists in #China must end. This is inexcusable. #FreeBeijing20Five Read this story: http://t.co/qV3VNOgmyG
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 7, 2015
The young Chinese feminists shaved their heads to protest inequality in higher education and stormed men’s restrooms to highlight the indignities women face in their prolonged waits at public toilets.
To publicize domestic violence, two prominent activists, Li Tingting and Wei Tingting, put on white wedding gowns, splashed them with red paint and marched through one of the capital’s most popular tourist districts chanting, “Yes to love, no to violence.”
Media-savvy, fearless and well-connected to feminists outside China, the young activists over the last three years have taken their righteous indignation to the streets, pioneering a brand of guerrilla theater familiar in the West but largely unheard-of in this authoritarian nation.
Now five of them — core members of China’s new feminist movement — sit in jail, accused of provoking social instability.
China has since fired back at Clinton for daring challenge these arrests:
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China peeved as Hillary Clinton denounces women's detention http://t.co/gQuxO0kYmE pic.twitter.com/DOsjuQjUJu
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 7, 2015
Hillary Clinton isn’t even president and China is already responding to her tweets http://t.co/OSwwV2Oss7
— Blake News (@blakehounshell) April 7, 2015
If #China gets angry when someone defends women like #FreeBeijing20Five, something's wrong. http://t.co/nL5h6hrwKU via @POLITICO
— Leah Schwarting (@LeahSchwarting) April 7, 2015
https://twitter.com/aseitzwald/status/585437611440877568
https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/585422436725817344
And now that Hillary Clinton has so publicly made an issue of the #FreeBeijing20Five, shouldn’t Apple CEO Tim Cook have the guts to do so, too?
Cook was extremely vocal and lashed out at Indiana’s new RFRA law in this Washington Post op-ed:
There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country. http://t.co/QJTkCuZVdo
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 30, 2015
Cook wrote about these RFRA laws:
They go against the very principles our nation was founded on, and they have the potential to undo decades of progress toward greater equality.
Now let’s see if Cook steps up and dares challenge the nation that builds his iPhones with the same intensity as he did Indiana.
We’re waiting.
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