Reporters Without Borders, reacting to news that the government of China has blocked social media Web sites such as Twitter, Bing, Hotmail, Flickr and others, condemned the communist regime for curbing free speech ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square military crackdown on student protesters.
“Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the blockage of a dozen websites such as Twitter, YouTube, Bing, Flickr, Opera, Live, Wordpress and Blogger in China,” they said in a prepared statement. “The Chinese government stops at nothing to silence what happened 20 years ago in Tiananmen Square. By blocking access to a dozen websites used daily by millions of Chinese citizens, the authorities have opted for censorship at any price rather than accept a debate about this event.”
Thursday marks two decades since the famous photo was taken of a lone Chinese protester standing before a row of tanks. The image, blocked by China through all popular search engines, has become iconic around the world as a representation of Chinese resistance.
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“Twitter has become increasingly popular in China over recent months, partly because it allows words or phrases that bring up an automatic ban or block on most internet service providers in China — such as 6/4 (or June 4),” reported the Times Online. “Indeed, mentions were rife about Charter 08 — a document issued online late last year by a group of prominent intellectuals and scholars calling for greater freedoms of speech and democracy. Any attempt to write the words Charter 08 on the internet in China or to reach a site containing references to it are blocked.
The Web site continued: “But those using Twitter are certainly not interested only in politics. The latest action by China’s busy censors closes down fans of the country’s most famous crosstalk artist Guo Degang — the Chinese equivalent of the Two Ronnies — who used Twitter to share his latest jokes.
“The demise of Twitter had been forecast a few days earlier by the well-known blogger Michael Anti, now outside China, who told the China-based blog Danwei.org: ‘Twitter is a new thing in China. The censors need time to figure out what it is. So enjoy the last happy days of twittering before the fate of YouTube descends on it one day.’”
YouTube was blocked by Chinese censors in March.
“[[As] the anniversary of what China calls the ‘4 June incident’ gets closer, the Communist Party appears to be in a particularly vigilant mood - it wants to make sure that there is no mention of the subject whatsoever,” noted the BBC.
“Access to Twitter was denied shortly after 1700 (0900 GMT) on Tuesday.”
There was no immediate comment from Microsoft which recently launched its new search engine Bing, Yahoo! which owns photo-sharing site Flickr, or Twitter to emails from AFP asking about the reported move by China.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) said it had received at least three reports of authorities blocking reporting at Tiananmen Square and intimidating journalists or their sources.
This video was broadcast by Al Jazeera on June 2, 2009.
