“Angry Youth, Charge!” This message, tweeted by a woman as a satire, was not a suggestion that young people max out their credit cards, but a message mocking anti-Japanese protesters, who had been energized by tensions between China and Japan after a dispute arose in September over islands claimed by both nations.

As a result, the woman was sentenced to a year in a Chinese labor camp.

What she retweeted was a satirical message encouraging protesters to crash the Japan pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. While the message was only a joke, bureaucrats in China didn’t get it. They thought it was for real. Now Cheng Jianping, 46, is in hot water and cooling her heels in jail, all without a trial, legal representation, or a determination by a jury of her peers. All she got was an arbitrary backhand slap by an unseen functionary, placed in office without input by the general public.

Her husband has spoken out against the tyrannical treatment of his wife, and the actions of the Chinese government have been condemned by Amnesty International as a demonstration of the level of “China’s

Image by stefano meneghetti via Flickr

Image by stefano meneghetti via Flickr

Image by stefano meneghetti via Flickr

Image by stefano meneghetti via Flickr

repression of online expression.”