China blocks Twitter, Bing and more before Tiananmen anniversary
June 4, 2009 is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre when the Chinese government used lethal force against student in order to stop a peaceful protest. Can it possibly be a coincidence that two days beforehand, Web sites including Twitter, Bing, Flickr, and Hotmail have been blocked behind the Great Firewall of China?
China has opened up massively over the past two decades, undergoing something of a cultural revolution. But the Communist government still likes to be in control of every aspect of its population’s lives. And this even extends to the Internet, an invention which is clearly capable of changing the lives of the Chinese, either by showing the truth or opening them up to different ways of doing and seeing things.
The Chinese government really doesn’t want this happen, which is why the Great Firewall of China is in place to shield the general populace from accessing any sites deemed unsuitable by the authorities. The list of these sites is growing longer by the day.
According to TechCrunch, the latest additions are the micro-blogging site Twitter, Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, Flickr, Hotmail, Live.com, Blogger, and more. These join the already-blocked YouTube and Wikipedia, which the Chinese government doesn’t seem to be able to make its mind up on.
The reason for these new additions to the banned list and the timing of the action is believed to be the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 4, 1989. Several hundred civilians were shot dead by the Chinese military as the government attempted to prevent a democratic protest from growing in Beijing.
The Chinese government clearly wants to prevent its citizens from discussing the event on or around the anniversary lest it give them any ideas to try something similar. Many younger Chinese people are thought to be ignorant of the massacre due to the policy of selective education and biased news reporting.
Whether access to these newly frowned-upon sites will be restored after the anniversary date has come and gone isn’t yet clear. Either way, it’s a big blow for those Chinese citizens who are using these kinds of sites to reach out to the wider world.
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June 3rd, 2009
The Communist Party of China doesn’t want the truth.
They can’t handle the truth.
Free speech is way more powerful then anything Mao’s “Little Red Book”
could ever achieve in modern China.
The poor Chinese are being muffled and stifled by their own government.
The Communist Chinese just can’t handle the truth,
because they are so ashamed of the 3000 people they murdered that day on June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square.
Let freedom ring!
Long live the Goddess of Democracy!
June 3rd, 2009
Dave, looks like you got BLORGE blocked in China!
June 4th, 2009
it’s a clash of the Titans — China versus Microsoft