China blocking websites on Tiananmen anniversary

Jake Widman
Friday, 05 June 2009 02:31

Your IT - Home IT

On the 20th anniversary of the brutal end of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, the Chinese government has blocked content-sharing websites and cordoned off the square itself.

On June 4, 1989, Chinese tanks cleared Beijing's Tiananmen Square of demonstrators who had been gathered there for nearly seven weeks.

Estimates of the resulting death toll range from 241 -- the official government figure, which includes soldiers -- to 3,000.

As this week's anniversary approached, the government blocked access to Twitter, Flickr, and Hotmail. Reports were that Microsoft's new search engine Bing was also blocked.

And some Chinese social sites, such as fanfou.com, posted notices that they would be down for "system maintenance" for the next few days.

Some of the U.S. Internet companies, generally reluctant to criticize the Chinese government's censorship habits in public, have been unusually outspoken about the blockage.  

Yahoo, for example, issued a statement reading, "We understand the Chinese government is blocking access to Flickr and other international sites, though the government has not issued any explanation. We believe a broad restriction without a legal basis is inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression."

The Chinese government also engaged in some physical blockage, sending police to the square to keep out demonstrators and foreign journalists.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said it had "received reports of assistants being called in for lengthy questioning, sources coming under heavy surveillance, university students being interrogated after talking to journalists, and at least one journalist receiving a warning from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."