Hong Kong police on Saturday blocked access to the Web site of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan due to “national security” concerns, Chinese state-owned daily Wen Wei Po reported on Sunday.
The report from Wen Wei Po, which is run by Beijing’s Hong Kong Liaison Office, said that access to the Web site was blocked due to contraventions of Hong Kong’s National Security Law.
The Stand News Web site said the measure likely signaled that Beijing is planning to extend its Internet firewall to Hong Kong.
“Hong Kong residents frequently leave messages on our Web site, often asking for help. Blocking the site like this is a warning sign that Beijing is extending more mainland China-style restrictions to Hong Kong,” Pastor Huang Chun-sheng (黃春生) said.
The report was the second in the past few months of a Web site being blocked in Hong Kong for alleged contraventions of the National Security Law. On Jan. 6, access to Web site HKChronicles — which documents information related to protests in Hong Kong over the past two years — was blocked in Hong Kong for “potentially harming national security or inciting such a crime.”
Following the blocked access to the church Web site, users in Hong Kong reported that although they were unable to directly load the Web site, they could access it through a virtual private network service, the church said.
The Wen Wei Po report said that the church was “encouraging Taiwanese separatists, and aiding Hong Kong rioters and extremists.”
It also said that the church had confiscated HK$4 million (US$515,487) of HK$10 million that was raised through a campaign promoted by Hong Kong radio station D100 to help Hong Kong residents flee to Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the official Web site of the Democratic Progressive Party, as well as the recruitment page of the Ministry of National Defense’s Web site, have also been blocked in Hong Kong, a source said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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