A Chinese Twitter user has been sentenced to one year in a labour camp for re-tweeting a message from her boyfriend that mocked anti Japanese protests taking place in China.

Any satire in Cheng Jianping's (wangyi09) tweet was lost on the Chinese authorities however. Her last post on the site after sending the tweet on October 17 was made on October 28.

It is thought to be the harshest punishment yet doled out by the Chinese regime to a Twitter user, ostensibly for the offence of “disturbing social order.”

The sentence was imposed despite the Communist party blocking twitter on the mainland, although it is widely accessed via proxy networks.

Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Director for the Asia-Pacific said: "Sentencing someone to a year in a labour camp, without trial, for simply repeating another person's clearly satirical observation on Twitter demonstrates the level of China's repression of online expression.”