BEIJING (AP) — China's Internet censors have removed a satirical cartoon featuring flesh-tearing rabbits that drew attention to injustices over the past year.
The video's director on Wednesday said he was just telling the truth about touchy social issues such as police brutality, food contamination, forced housing demolitions and abuses of power.
Next week is the start of the Year of the Rabbit in the lunar calendar, and the video shows rabbits being subjected by uniformed tigers — the past year's animal — to the various injustices before staging a revolution in which they rip apart the tigers with their teeth.
The video, which was removed from major websites in China but remains on YouTube, includes images that are immediately familiar in China. One rabbit, standing on a home about to be demolished, sets himself on fire. A speeding car flattens another rabbit, and the driver says, "My father is Tiger Gang!" — a reference to the son of a senior police official who invoked his father's name to try to duck responsibility in a hit-and-run case.
The video also evokes China's massive tainted milk scandal that sickened tens of thousands of children and killed at least six, showing baby rabbits drinking from bottles of "Three Tigers" milk and their heads exploding.
"What I said is true, and I don't understand why they're scared of cartoons," said the video's director, Wang Bo, who works with the Beijing-based animation studio Hutoon.
Wang said he hasn't heard directly from the authorities, and that he created the cartoon just for fun.
"I will continue to create cartoons based on the development of my interest," he said in a telephone interview.
The video shows a dream seen by a little boy who falls asleep over a picture book of happy rabbits cavorting in a landscape with flowers, a rainbow and text declaring a "beautiful and happy life."
When the boy awakes from the bloody dream, he says, "This really was an interesting year!" before his mother calls him away to make dumplings, a popular New Year's dish.
China's Internet users find creative ways to skewer government policies and dubious events, and this isn't the first time sarcastic videos have appeared. The most popular ones are passed around online, one step ahead of censors who try to keep tight control over public opinion.
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