Chinese authorities shut down blogs, Internet forums and social media sites such as Twitter in an apparent attempt to stem online political discussion ahead of today’s 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
As in past years, dissidents were rounded up and shipped out of Beijing and foreign media reports on the protests and continuing calls for an investigation into the events of June 3 to June 4, 1989, have been blocked.
‘INTENSIFIED CLAMPDOWN’
However, the cut-off of Internet sites marks a new chapter in the authorities’ attempts to muzzle dissent, one that testifies to the burgeoning influence of such technology among young Chinese in an authoritarian society where information is tightly controlled.
“There has been a really intensified clampdown on quasi-public discussion of awareness of this event,” said Xiao Qiang (蕭強), an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley and the director of Berkeley’s China Internet Project.
“It’s a discussion about where China is now and where China can go from here. So the authorities are making a major crackdown to block user-generated sites such as Twitter and show there is no right to public discussion,” he said.
MESSAGE BOARDS
China has the world’s largest online population and Internet communities have proven increasingly influential in spreading word of events to everything from student protests to group shopping excursions.
People are going outside the normal, controlled channels to set up communities online, spreading information about campus unrest and other activities that the government considers to be potentially subversive.
Government Internet monitors have closed message boards on more than 6,000 Web sites affiliated with colleges and universities, apparently to head off talk about the 1989 events, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.
Numerous blogs maintained by edgy government critics such as avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) have been blocked and the text-messaging service Twitter and pictures on photo sharing site Flikr could not be accessed within China yesterday.
Video sharing site YouTube has been blocked within China since March.
“We understand the Chinese government is blocking access to Flickr and other international sites, though the government has not issued any explanation,” said Jason Khoury, spokesman for Yahoo, which owns Flickr.
“We believe a broad restriction without a legal basis is inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression,” Khoury said.
Officials from Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
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