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Great firewall activated
In a crackdown apparently timed at the 20th anniversary of the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations, China has pulled the plug on the social networking site Twitter and dozens of other internet sites and blogs.
- Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
- Published: 23:36 June 3, 2009
Beijing: There is no twittering about Tiananmen Square, or anything else, in China this week.
In a crackdown apparently timed at the 20th anniversary of the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations, China has pulled the plug on the social networking site Twitter and dozens of other internet sites and blogs.
Not to neglect the old-fashioned methods of censorship, foreign newspapers in the past few days have had pages strategically ripped out.
Television screens in the diplomatic compound went black when the British Broadcasting Corporation was airing a report about Tiananmen Square, only to come back on when reports switched to the missing Air France jet.
"They feel this is a fragile time for China," said artist and activist Ai Weiwei, whose popular blog was shut down by authorities.
Notwithstanding, two decades that have elapsed but the demonstrations of 1989 remain one of the most sensitive subjects in China.
The very mention of the date June 4 (when the Peoples Liberation Army moved in to crush the demonstrations) is banned in the Chinese press.
Police have detained writers, activists and especially former dissidents who participated in the 1989 demonstrations.
Others have been put under surveillance or house arrest, barred from travelling to Hong Kong, where a demonstration marking the anniversary took place on Sunday.
Besides Twitter, which went down on Tuesday, China has blocked Hotmail's web-based e-mail and the photo-sharing site, Flickr. YouTube has been blocked since April.
Jeremy Goldkorn, an expert in online media in China said he thinks the government was upset that people were trading information about how to read a recently-published controversial memoir.
It was written by the late Zhao Ziyang, the former secretary-general of the Communist Party fired in 1989 for opposing a military crackdown on the demonstrations.
The Chinese government routinely raises what is nicknamed 'The Great Firewall of China' at times of political sensitivity.
It has also cancelled conferences and speeches around this period. A musician who was scheduled give a radio interview today about the cultural scene in Beijing said he was told by the station it had to be cancelled because of "technical difficulties".
"The host apologised and explained there is a rash of technical difficulties arising all over the country [today]," said the musician, who asked not to be named.
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