China Shuts Down Social Networking as Tiananmen Anniversary Nears
posted by ModeratorFiled under: First Amendment Issues
China rounds up dissidents, blocks Twitter
by Christopher Bodeen
1010WINS
June 3, 2009
Beijing (AP) — Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square this week, Chinese authorities have rounded up dissidents and shipped them out of town. Now, they’ve even shut down Twitter.
Along with their usual methods of muzzling dissent, the authorities extended their efforts Tuesday to silence social networking sites that might foster discussion of any commemoration of the events of June 3-4, 1989.
The action is a new sign of the government’s concern of the potential of such technology 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, adjunct professor of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley, and director of The Berkeley 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. (more…)
