Freedom of Press: June 2009 Archives

By Keith Bradsher | The New York Times
June 25, 2009

The Chinese Health Ministry on Thursday ordered sharp restrictions on Internet access to medical research papers on sexual subjects. It is the latest move in what the ministry calls an antipornography campaign that many China experts see as a harbinger of a broader crackdown on freedom of expression and dissent.

In the past month, central government officials have cited a need to control pornography in ordering that filtering software be preinstalled on all new computers sold in China starting July 1.

They have also forced Google to disable a function that lets the search engine suggest terms and on Wednesday night even briefly blocked access nationwide to Google's main search engine and other services like Gmail. Some users were still having problems accessing Google sites on Thursday night.

In addition, Chinese bloggers say they have detected evidence of a concerted effort to stain Google's image. They say that someone in Beijing manipulated Google's software to make it more likely to suggest a pornographic search term during a state television broadcast.

At the same time, the government seems to have stepped up harassment of human rights advocates.

Liu Xiaobo, one of China's best-known dissidents, was formally arrested Tuesday on suspicion of subversion, six months after he was detained for joining other intellectuals in signing a document calling for democracy. This month, the authorities refused to renew the licenses of more than a dozen lawyers after they agreed to represent clients in human rights cases.

The same public security agencies charged with fighting pornography are responsible for suppressing illegal political activity, said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch. The government's statistics for seizures of illegal publications tend to include both pornographic and political documents, he noted.

"The two are closely associated," Mr. Bequelin said. "These campaigns work hand in hand."

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By RADIO FREE ASIA
June 21, 2009

Tibetans cite a new government effort to control what news they hear.

KATHMANDU--Chinese authorities have begun to remove satellite dishes in a Tibetan-populated region of China in an effort to block access to foreign broadcasts, according to Tibetan sources.

Tibetan-language broadcasts by Radio Free Asia and Voice of America appear to be particular targets of the campaign, one source said.

"Beginning in April of this year, the local broadcasting department oin Kanlho [in Chinese, Gannan] prefecture [of Gansu province] dispatched staff to the counties to install cable lines and to pull down the satellite dishes used by local Tibetans to listen to foreign broadcasts like RFA and VOA Tibetan programs," a Tibetan woman in the Labrang area of Kanlho said.

"They also installed cable lines for listening to government-approved programs," the woman added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Local Tibetans were told by officials that they were carrying out the directives of central and provincial level authorities," she said.

"They distributed copies of the letters issued by the government."

A Gannan prefecture document obtained by RFA, citing State Council document #129, describes what it calls "unprecedented efforts to collect satellite dishes" to restrict access to long-distance broadcasts in Gansu province, a site of repeated Tibetan protests against Chinese rule during the past year.

Anyone failing to comply with government directives to remove the dishes would be "dealt with in accordance with law," the memo said.

Begun in 2000

Tibetan writer Woeser, in the June 15 entry of her blog "Invisible Tibet," noted efforts "as early as 2000" by China's government to block broadcasts by Radio Free Asia and Voice of America.

Hundreds of jamming towers have been built in Tibetan regions for this purpose, she wrote.

"The Chinese government is now forcing Tibetan monks to pull down satellite dishes so that they cannot listen to RFA and VOA broadcasts. In May this year, the Chinese authorities carried out the policy vigorously in Kanlho."

"In their place, the local Tibetans are forced to listen to [state-controlled] local TV programs connected through land lines," she wrote.

Originally reported by Lhumbum Tashi for RFA's Tibetan service. Tibetan service director: Jigme Ngapo. Translations by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

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A New York Times Editorial
June 12, 2009

China has accomplished remarkable things in the past 20 years, including building one of the world's largest economies. Computers helped speed that development -- and will be even more important in the future. So Beijing's decision to require that all new personal computers sold in China contain software that bars access to certain Internet content seems particularly self-destructive and foolish.

The new rules say all PCs sold in China after June 30 must include special software -- designed by a company with links to China's military and security agencies -- to filter out pornography and other "vulgar" material. Beijing claims that it is trying to protect children. Don't believe it.

In any country, such vague terms would be a frightening license for government intrusion. China's government, which fears the free flow of ideas, already vigorously restricts Internet content, including blocking access to Web sites on Tibet, human rights and other politically sensitive subjects.

Chinese bloggers, dissidents and even some state news media outlets are right to worry that the new software could be used even more nefariously: to collect personal data and spy on consumer Web habits.

The contract for the software, meanwhile, was awarded without industry input. There are serious questions about whether the product will even work.

The last thing China needs is to force the installation of software that could cause millions of computers to crash. That would feed new resentment against a government already accused of gross incompetence after thousands of children died in the collapse of shoddily constructed schools in the 2008 earthquake.

International manufacturers probably could force the government to reverse the new rules by threatening not to sell their products. But they have no history of standing up to Beijing. We hope they are making a stronger case in private for a rollback than was apparent in the anemic public statement issued by a coalition of American trade associations. They called for "an open and healthy dialogue" with the government but seemed to go along with the farcical claim that its intention really was to improve parental control.

If Beijing does not reconsider its foolhardy decision, the new rules would take effect on July 1. Our advice to Chinese consumers: Buy your PC now.

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By Michael Wines and Andrew Jacobs | THE NEW YORK TIMES
June 3, 2009

China's government censors have begun to block access to the Internet services Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail and Micarosoft's live.com, broadening an already extraordinary effort to shield its citizens from any hint of Thursday's 20th anniversary of the military crackdown that ended the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.

People in China who tried to gain access to the blocked Web sites on Tuesday instead encountered an error message saying the sites' servers had unexpectedly dropped the Internet connection -- a standard indicator that access has been blocked.

Weeks earlier, censors blocked Chinese users from viewing all videos on YouTube, and in recent days some television viewers have reported that BBC World News reports related to the Tiananmen anniversary were being selectively blacked out of broadcast programs.

Government censorship of political material on Internet bulletin boards and Web sites is common in China, but this is the first time Twitter has been blocked. Some well-known political activists, unable to post comments on Chinese blogs or chat sites, had switched to Twitter in recent months as an uncensored outlet for their views.

A number of foreign-based sites that have hosted Chinese bloggers, including blogspot.com and the Chinese-language version of wordpress.com, have also been blocked in recent weeks.

The South China Morning Post, an English-language newspaper based in Hong Kong that has frequently featured articles on Tiananmen and other sensitive issues, has also seen its distribution on the Chinese mainland curbed in advance of the anniversary on Thursday. And some Beijing readers of last weekend's edition of The International Herald Tribune discovered that an inside page of the newspaper with an article on the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan religious leader, was missing.

The anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, in which army troops killed hundreds of student demonstrators, workers and ordinary citizens, is one of a series of politically sensitive dates this year that have provoked sweeping security measures by Chinese officials.

In recent days, the government has detained a number of political dissidents seen as threats to public order during the anniversary period, including one who had released an open letter complaining about economic hardship visited on former Tiananmen demonstrators who were jailed after the crackdown.

The dissident, Wu Gaoxing, was seized Saturday at his home in Taizhou, a coastal city south of Shanghai, according to the New York advocacy group Human Rights in China. Mr. Wu was among five men, all once jailed for their roles in the Tiananmen movement, who released a letter last weekend charging that former prisoners have been singled out for economic hardship long after their prison terms ended.

Human Rights in China said Mr. Wu was taken away and his computer confiscated about an hour after the letter, addressed to President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders, became public.

Mr. Wu, a writer and former educator, was taken into custody in 1989 and imprisoned for two years after he joined protests in his home province of Zhejiang against the military crackdown on Tiananmen demonstrators. "In this society that claims to be harmonious, we have become 'citizens of the three have-nots waiting to die': we have no regular jobs, no pensions, and no health insurance; if we get sick, we can only wait to die, and all this just because 20 years ago we were sentenced for political reasons," the letter says.

The men, among them a former Communist Party member and a factory worker, said they had been denied pensions, health care and regular employment since taking part in local rallies that were inspired by the protests in Beijing. One of the signers, Mao Guoliang, said he had been fired from 17 schools since he served a four-year term for "counterrevolutionary activities."

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