Minnesota Student Gets Prison In China Because Of Tweets

A University of Minnesota student must serve six months in prison in China due to tweets he is accused of sending while in the United States.

Luo Daiqing, a liberal arts student and Chinese national, has been linked with an account that posted tweets Chinese authorities deemed unflattering of a "national leader," reports Axios.

The pictures might resemble Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The same account also retweeted pictures of Winnie the Pooh, a character now banned in China. The character is banned in China after people compared it to Xi.

U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, issued a statement asking China to release Daiqing:

"The Chinese Communist Party ought to release Luo Daiqing immediately, and the University of Minnesota ought to give him a full-ride scholarship. Don't forget that the Chinese Communist Party has banned Twitter, so the only people who even saw these tweets were the goons charged with monitoring Chinese citizens while they're enjoying freedom here in the United States. This is what ruthless and paranoid totalitarianism looks like."

Daiqing is enrolled in the current academic year. The University of Minnesota says it is aware of the incident.