Edward Snowden slams China censorship of his book, vows to put uncut version online, as whistle-blower calls it ‘a disgrace to the dignity of society’
- References to China’s military cyber intelligence, Great Firewall and the Arab spring missing from simplified Chinese edition of his memoir Permanent Record
- Snowden asks for followers’ help to compile ‘correct and unabridged version’
Snowden tweeted in Chinese on Tuesday that the censorship was “covering up the basic truth about domestic surveillance and about democracy, which is a disgrace to the dignity of a great society”.
“This violates the publishing agreement, so I’m going to resist it the way I know best: it’s time to blow the whistle,” he wrote, topping his tweet with a promise to share the uncensored version online for free in a few weeks. Snowden also apologised for his poor Chinese.
The simplified Chinese edition of the memoir was released in China by a subsidiary of a state-owned publisher last week, but readers soon found a number of apostrophes in the text, which suggested content had been deleted.
Snowden posted the censored chapters next to the corresponding English edition online, “to expose every shameful redaction the censors demanded”, and asked for followers’ help to “compile a correct and unabridged version”.
