China The censored letter from tennis player Peng Shuai
Where is Peng Shuai?
The disappearance of the tennis player who accused a former Chinese vice premier of rape
Chinese tennis star
Peng Shuai,
whose whereabouts has been a matter of international concern for weeks, attended a tennis tournament in Beijing on Sunday, according to official photos released by the tournament organized by the China Open.
Peng can be seen among the guests at the Fila Kids Junior Tennis Challenger, dressed in a dark blue jacket and white pants, according to images posted on the event's official WeChat page.
Tweet published by the Chinese journalist Shen Shiwei with some highly questioned recent photographs of the tennis player SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITEvia REUTERS
The former world number of doubles had not been seen or heard publicly since she said on Chinese social media on November 2 that former Vice Premier
Zhang Gaoli had forced her to have sex
and then they had an intermittent consensual relationship.
Peng Shuai
(35 years old) dropped the bomb on Weibo on November 2. His message was barely 35 minutes online before it was deleted. It was not directed against just any politician.
The defendant was Zhang Gaoli (75 years old), who retired as deputy prime minister in 2018
. He was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the ruling Communist Party, the supreme leadership body, made up of only the seven most important people in China.
It is not the first complaint of its kind within the silenced
MeToo
movement
.
But until now it had never splashed on someone who was part of the political elite of the second world power.
Neither the complainant was until now a high-level athlete who
has won Wimbledon and Roland Garros in doubles, and has been the first Chinese tennis player to reach number one in that category
.
Also this Saturday, media related to the Chinese Communist Party have released a supposedly recent video in which the tennis player is seen with friends in a restaurant.HU XIJIN / TWITTERvia REUTERS
In the deleted post,
Peng said he had "intermittent consensual sex" with Zhang, married with children. But the tennis player denounced that, on one of these occasions, she was forced
. "That afternoon I was very scared. I did not expect it to be like that. I did not agree to have sex with you and I kept crying that afternoon. Why did you have to come back with me, take me home to force me to have sex with you? I feel like a walking corpse "he wrote on Weibo.
Searches related to the topic in browsers were blocked.
Peng's Weibo profile, where he had half a million followers, was removed
. Days later it was activated again, but without any mention of Zhang. The censorship reached the point that when writing the word "tennis" in the social network, only a blank space appeared.
Since Peng dropped the accusations against the former Chinese politician,
no one has heard from her since, sparking rumors in the foreign press about her possible disappearance
.
Although, normally, when a similar scandal breaks out in China, the protagonist usually remains silent for a time, away from the spotlight and keeping a low profile for fear that the authorities will accuse her of "causing problems", the common charge against the critics that the regime often uses to lock them up.
World tennis bodies have expressed concern, with the Women's Tennis Association threatening to withdraw tournaments from China.
The United States and Britain have requested proof
of Peng's
whereabouts
and safety.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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