By Ariel Lin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
BEIJING, China – China has shutdown several of the world’s most popular websites in an apparent attempt to censor international coverage of the violence in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The Google-owned YouTube, the video-sharing website blocked in China on Sunday after footage of recent deadly protests in Tibet appeared on the site. Some videos on YouTube show a public gathering, including Tibetan monks in their distinctive saffron robes and peaceful marching. The most hits video (over 80,000 so far) actually shows bodies on the streets, protesters throwing rocks at Chinese army vehicles and other images.
Popular news sites reporting on the riots, such as CNN, The Guardian, the BBC, Google News, and Yahoo have allegedly had all or parts of their sites blocked. Flickr, the photo-sharing website, Wikipedia, and the LA Times, the US newspaper, are among the other sites to which access has been cut off. These websites have been subject to what is known as ‘keyword filtering’, where a Chinese internet user attempting to load a page which contains words such as ‘Tibet’ or ‘Dalai Lama’ or ‘riot’ will see the site stall.
Foreign journalists being denied access and foreign tourists ordered out of the city. Foreign media have been banned from Tibet, CNN and British Broadcasting Corp. broadcasts of a speech by the Dalai Lama were also blocked, the newspaper said. According to a CNN video, says the station has not been able to send a team to report the news. Some stations, such as the BBC, picked up photos and other contributions from tourists in Tibet. The BBC and CNN are only broadcast within international hotels and diplomatic compounds in China.
China strictly controls access to information, the only footage broadcast by state-run media so far has been a short clip showing Tibetan rioters in the city destroying Chinese shops, but nothing has been released on the resulting crackdown by police.
For more information, please see:
AP – China Blocks YouTube Over Tibet Videos – 16 March 2008
AFP – YouTube access blocked in China after Tibet clips appear – 16 March 2008
CNN – American film crew kept from China protests – 17 March 2008
Guardian – China blocks media due to Tibet unrest – 17 March 2008
Times Online – China blocks YouTube, Yahoo! Over Tibet – 17 March 2008
