China charges blogger over Galwan casualties

A grab from a clip showing Indian and Chinese soldiers in Galwan

A popular Chinese blogger with millions of followers has been charged for posts regarding military casualties in the Galwan valley clash with India last June.

Authorities accused the blogger of demeaning military casualties of the border clash, South China Morning Post reported.

Qiu Ziming, 38, was charged for comments that prosecutors in the eastern city of Nanjing said, "distorted facts, defamed five soldiers who defended the Chinese border, and have led to severely negative social impacts".

The comments came after China admitted for the first time that four of its soldiers had been killed and one seriously wounded during the clash in the Himalayas, the newspaper reported. Twenty Indian soldiers were martyred in the face-off.

Qiu, a former reporter with the weekly Economic Observer, had 2.5 million followers on China's Twitter-like platform Weibo when he had published two posts that suggested a commander survived the clashes because he was the highest-ranking officer there.

He also suggested that more Chinese soldiers might have been killed in the conflict than those disclosed by the authorities.

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