Beijing (AFP)

Mass detention of Uyghurs, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong or Taiwan's concept of independence: no subject was taboo for Chinese internet users on the American audio app Clubhouse, but Beijing was quick to silence the conversations .

The party will have lasted about a week on this application which allows users, by invitation only, to listen and participate in live conversations freely moderated in virtual "rooms".

Born in May 2020, Clubhouse had for a brief moment bypassed censors and attracted crowds of Chinese internet users, especially after billionaire Elon Musk took part in a conversation on the app earlier in the month.

In recent days, Chinese Internet users had filled its "rooms" to discuss subjects usually censored, such as Beijing's incarceration of predominantly Muslim Uyghur communities in the Xinjiang region.

But Monday night in China, the app posted an error message for users who did not have a VPN to establish a secure connection, a sure sign of the arrival of censors.

"In the era (of President) Xi, the ban is only a matter of time," said Lokman Tsui, professor of communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Clubhouse users have taken advantage of a rare window of freedom of expression in a country where international social networks like Twitter and Facebook are not allowed to exist.

Even though Chinese versions of these platforms have emerged and are now an integral part of Chinese daily life, each of them knows that all content posted is closely monitored and censored.

For companies in the industry, erasing politically sensitive content, including criticism or government challenges, is commonplace, as internet users vie on their side of ingenuity to defeat the vigilance of censors.

- "Living in a lie" -

Last Saturday, on the Clubhouse application, more than 1,000 users came to join a debate on the incarceration of Uyghurs.

According to human rights organizations, more than a million Uyghurs are or have been detained in political re-education camps in Xinjiang.

Beijing rejects the term "camps" and asserts that they are vocational training centers, intended to provide employment to the population and therefore to distance them from religious extremism.

During the debate last Saturday on the application, at least three people, identified as Uyghurs, told their personal experiences as well as several people of the Han ethnicity (ethnic Chinese) claiming to live in Xinjiang.

"I lived in a big lie," said a woman who changed her mind after a stay abroad which allowed her to learn more about Xinjiang.

Others have come to Beijing's defense, one man saying, for example, that "re-education camps" were necessary.

The moderators let people speak Chinese without interruption, in a conversation that ended the following afternoon.

On Monday, more than 2,000 netizens gathered to discuss the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen in 1989, such a completely taboo subject in China.

Internet users from Hong Kong and Taiwan also took part in the debates.

But the conversations were not limited to sensitive political topics: the application was also an opportunity for homosexuals to be able to discuss their experiences and setbacks.

Spaces for free expression online have been "drastically reduced" since 2013, the year Xi Jinping became president, also judge Emilie Frenkiel, associate professor at the University of Paris Est Créteil.

But, according to her, the opportunities to speak freely about sensitive matters with other Chinese speaking interlocutors, like the Taiwanese is "so rare that even if it is risky, many still want to take advantage of it."

And this is what all Internet users regretted the most after the ban: the too early disappearance of a precious space for unlimited debate.

"If I came here, underlines one of them, it is because the word was not censored".

© 2021 AFP