Chinese writer Tianyi sentenced to decade in prison for gay erotic novel

Pseudonymous author was charged under law that makes it an ‘especially serious’ crime to sell more than 5,000 copies of a work classed as pornographic

Free-speech campaigners have slammed China’s “flagrant disregard for fundamental human rights” after the author of a gay erotic novel was sentenced to more than a decade in prison for producing and selling pornographic materials.

The author, who writes under the pseudonym Tianyi and is from eastern China’s Anhui province, was identified by the state-run Global Times only by her surname, Liu. The paper reported that police were alerted after the book Gongzhan, translated as Occupy, went viral last year. Police in the Anhui city of Wuhu, where Liu was sentenced, said the novel described obscene sexual behaviour between males, and was “full of perverted sexual acts such as violation and abuse”.

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