The Lair of Fang-Face DreamWeaver: Study of censorship and free speech

Return to chronology 16 Jun 2002

Deadly fire destroys Internet cafe in China

Last Updated Sat, 15 Jun 2002 23:10:23

BEIJING - At least 24 people were killed when a fire erupted inside an Internet cafe in China's capital city early Sunday.

State media reported that several people were also injured in the blaze, which broke out around 2:40 a.m.

The fire, in northwest Beijing, was brought under control within an hour. The district is home to several universities.

Officials said the cause was still under investigation.

Internet cafes are common and legal in China. But they can also be dangerous because they're often poorly lit, and have blocked entrances to discourage inspections by police.

The businesses have become popular in the country, where many people cannot afford to buy their own computers. The biggest cafes have hundreds of terminals, and are often set up near universities.

Authorities have raided and shut down thousands of cyber-lounges in recent years, accusing customers of looking at pornography or other banned Web sites.

Return to chronology 16 Jun 2002

BEIJING CLOSES INTERNET CAFES AFTER DEADLY FIRE

WebPosted Sun Jun 16 21:02:55 2002

BEIJING--Beijing has ordered the city's Internet cafes closed after 24 people perished in a fire at an unlicensed Internet cafe - the deadliest blaze in the city in half a century.

Sunday's fire erupted on the top floor of the two-storey concrete building around 2:45 a.m.

People inside were trapped by iron bars over the windows. The entrance was locked, officials said, and there were no emergency exits.

The cause of the fire was still under investigation late Sunday. Police issued an arrest order for the owner of the cafe. The place had been open for about a month, according to state media.

The fire, in northwest Beijing, was brought under control within an hour. The Haidian district is home to several universities.

Internet cafes are common and legal in China. They can also be dangerous because they're often poorly lit and have blocked entrances to discourage inspections by police.

The businesses have become popular in the country, where millions of people cannot afford to buy their own computers.

There are believed to be about 2,400 Internet cafes in Beijing, but only 200 are licensed. The biggest have hundreds of terminals and are often near universities.

Authorities have raided and shut down thousands of cyber-lounges in recent years, accusing customers of looking at pornography or other banned Web sites.

Return to chronology 16 Jun 2002

2004, June 04: The 15th Anniversary of The Tiannanmen Massacre -- Liu Si

By the "People's" Republic of China. The Chinese government marked this occasion with a series of crackdowns leading up to the anniversary, and by arresting some sixteen people who had purportedly gathered in the square to mark the day.
On 27 May, Reporters Without Borders condemned the Chinese authorities for placing several human rights activists under house arrest to prevent them from publicly marking the anniversary. Among them is Liu Xiaobo, described as a champion of free expression and author of a number of articles about cyberdissidence in China. Reporters Without Borders called for the immediate lifting of the restrictions on Lui and other dissidents designed, and wrote of the situation: Police have been surrounding the homes of the best known activists for several days, stopping them from meeting journalists or other dissidents. Their phone lines, which are tapped, are cut as soon as they begin any conversation deemed as "sensitive" in the eyes of the authorities. The same thing has also been happening on the Internet.
On 02 Jun, RSF detailed the following oppressions:
Over the last 15 years, more than 130 journalists and Internet users have been jailed, of whom 43 directly participated in "Beijing Spring." Among them, three are still behind bars:
Yu Dongyue, an art critic with News of Liuyang, who was arrested on 23 May 1989 and sentenced to 20 years in prison ;
Chen Yanbin, co-editor of the underground magazine Tielu, arrested in 1990 and sentenced to 15 years in prison,
Liu Jingsheng, a journalist with the underground magazine Tansuo, arrested on 28 May 1992 and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Internet webmaster Huang Qi has been in jail since 3 June 2000 for having allowed articles about the Tiananmen Square massacre to be posted on his website, which was hosted in the United States after being initially banned in China. He received a five-year prison term for "subversion" and "inciting the overthrow of state power."
Chinese authorities recently put several human rights activists under house arrest.
Dr. Jiang Yanyong, the military hospital doctor known for exposing the severity of the SARS epidemic in Beijing, was "exiled" to Xinjiang province for asking government officials, last March, to reconsider their position on the massacre of 4 June 1989. In his reply, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao explained that the Communist Party had merely acted to preserve the country's unity and stability.
This year in Hong Kong, the pressure has intensified against journalists and human rights activists who are urging the public to demonstrate on the occasion of 4 June. Unidentified individuals have been tearing down the posters announcing this commemorative event.
As of this writing, any journalist daring to question the official version of the events of 4 June -- the regime still considers that the Army's intervention was "appropriate" -- or who attempts to commemorate the "Beijing Spring," takes a risk in doing so.
The Internet is being subjected to the same type of censorship. In May 2003, Reporters without Borders established that the use of the term "4 June" (Liu Si) was prohibited on Chinese websites and in chat rooms. Filters set up by the authorities systematically block any messages referring to the massacre.
On 04 Jun 1989, Chinese authorities began closely monitoring foreign correspondents, especially their relations with dissidents. Over the last 10 years, more than 40 foreign journalists were subjected to peremptory questioning for having met with activists associated with the student movement or the Chinese Democratic Party.
Beijing's city hall passed a new regulation in mid-April 2004 prohibiting any sort of gathering in the vicinity of Tiananmen Square.
Despite the promises made by authorities before Beijing was chosen as the site for the 2008 Olympic Games, Reporters without Borders has noted no significant improvement in working conditions for foreign journalists.
Reporters without Borders also asked the Chinese government:
to release the 27 journalists and 61 cyber-dissidents currently behind bars, three of whom were jailed for taking part in the 1989 democratic movement;
to abolish censorship relating to the events of 4 June 1989 in the press and on the Internet;
to put an end to the harassment and vexatious measures (house arrest, shadowing, wiretaps, etc.) inflicted upon journalists who participated in the "Beijing Spring";
to authorize exiled journalists and dissidents to return to China in complete safety;
to allow the Chinese and international press to report on dissident group activities.
On Liu Si itself, CBC NewsOnline reported that some 16 men and women had been picked up and dragged to police vans in the square. Although the report also stated that it was not possible to establish whether the detentions were related to the anniversary or not. As of this date, China still won't confirm any details of the violent crackdown in 1989 or admit it did anything wrong in killing hundreds of what it termed "counter-revolutionaries." Estimates of the death toll from the bloody clash are that as many as 2,000 pro-democracy protesters might have lost their lives.

Return to chronology 09 Jun 2004

2008, March 10: Another monstrous human rights violation

By the People's Republic of China. In a redux of the Tiannenmen Square Massacre and suppression against the Saffron Revolution, the government of China unleashed a new torrent of lethal force against peaceful dissidents and protesters, and effective sweeping censorship in an effort to hide their bloody-handedness. A brief timeline of events follows:
March 10: Demonstrations and protests erupted in Tibet on this day to mark the anniversary of the 1959 uprising which China suppressed violently and which led the Dalai Lama to flee to exile in India. Over the course of the week an unverified number of people (ten by Chinese sources, eighty by Tibetan sources), had died as a result of Chinese government force used to suppress the dissension.
March 12: On this day the government of China began denying permission to foreign correspondents wanting to enter Tibet, and at least 25 journalists have reportedly been expelled from Tibet or Tibetan areas. One European correspondent confirmed to Reporters Without Borders that requests for permission that had been faxed to the Beijing authorities simply went unanswered. Officials responsible for giving permits for Tibet also simply stopped answering phone calls beginning on 14 Mar.
March 14: China's state-run press agency, Xinhua, reported on the weekend of 17 Mar, that at least 10 people were had been killed on this day. However, a spokesman for Tibet's government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, said witnesses had reported counting at least eighty bodies since violent, suppressive measures broke out.
March 16: On this day the Chinese government filtered out access to the YouTube video-sharing web site after footage of demonstrations in the streets of Lhasa was posted there. The message, "incorrect address" appears when anyone tries to open it. The Youtube videos are also inaccessible from the website Google Video, and the BBC, CNN, and Yahoo News websites were reported to be regularly inaccessible over the past few days. The censorship is highly discriminatory, however, as China allows commentary and even hate speech against Tibet and so-called Tibetan separatists. The word "separatist" is misnomer; such people are resisters against the illegal occupation of Tibet, effected since an illegal invasion of the country in Oct 1950. Anyone searching for Tibet in Chinese can see videos on YouTube.cn and other web sites which are hostile to the Tibetans, while Chinese video-sharing platforms such as http://www.tudou.com and http://www.56com, which are the most popular, have had all news referring to the latest events deleted.
March 17: Writers from Canada, the United States, and China denounced the restrictions on the press and the flow of information from Tibet. By this point a week of protests and repression had reportedly resulted in as many as 100 deaths in Lhasa and other Tibetan cities. Warning that news blackouts, communications interruptions and censorship remove a critical deterrent to human rights abuses and increase suspicions of official wrongdoing, the Representatives of PEN Canada, PEN American Center, and the Independent Chinese PEN Center demanded that the Chinese government:
provide immediate, and unfettered access to Tibet and all traditionally Tibetan areas in Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan provinces to international journalists;
restore phone and Internet access; and,
end all domestic censorship of international news feeds and Internet reports from Tibet.

The press release from which this entry derives stated that satellite broadcasts focusing on events in Tibet over the past week were reportedly jammed in Beijing and other Chinese cities, and entire news sites such as the LA Times and The Guardian have been shut down, leaving the citizens of China completely uninformed about the transpiring crisis. The action was condemned by officers of the various chapters of PEN:

Dr. Yu Zhang, Secretary-general of Independent Chinese PEN Center, likened the recent crackdown to a brutality in Tibet that preceded the Tiannenmen Square Massacre when he commented: "This is reminding us of what happened both in Lhasa in March and in Beijing in June 19 years ago. As the truth of bloody Lhasa event in 1989 was little known beyond the region due to the governmental restrictions on the press, Chinese people could prepare nothing to prevent the similar bloodshed from being reproduced in Beijing and elsewhere in China a few months later. It is unforgivable to allow history to repeat itself when the whole world is now watching Beijing for its promise of the press freedom and openness once more."
Nelofer Pazira, president of PEN Canada: "'One World, One Dream' is the motto of the Beijing Olympics. But it seems that Tibetans are not included in that dream, as the denial of their human rights and now this violent crushing of these protests indicate. And the rest of the world is not being allowed to know that."
Francine Prose, President of PEN American Center: "The Chinese government pledged to the world that there will be no restrictions on media reporting and movement of journalists up to and including the Olympic Games - a pledge that's completely undermined by its conduct in Tibet. Even with the limited information emanating from Tibet, it is clear the Chinese government has responded aggressively to what apparently began as peaceful demonstrations. The Chinese government's suffocating restrictions on news reporting only fuel suspicions that its actions go beyond what is necessary to protect public safety and amount to another violent crackdown on free expression and dissent."
Also on this day, a reported fifteen journalists from Hong Kong, representing at least six media, were expelled from the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, having been accused by the authorities of "illegal reporting". They were forcibly removed to the airport and put on a flight to Chengdu in Sichuan province. Dickson Lee, a photographer on the South China Morning Post, told Agence France-Presse: "They were not very polite. They came and looked at our computers, searching for video footage." These reporters had earlier gotten out footage from Lhasa showing the riots which, according to the Tibetan government in exile, left nearly eighty people dead.
The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) put the lie to some of China's specious excuses. A HKJA press release posted at the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) web site read:
On 17 March 2008, journalists from at least six Hong Kong media outlets were placed under escort and ordered out of Lhasa, Tibet.
The HKJA considers these actions to be an unacceptable breach of the "Measures for the Reporting of Activities in the Mainland Conducted by the Journalists of Hong Kong and Macau during the Beijing Olympic Games and the Preparatory Period", a policy implemented since January 2007. According to the Measures, reporters are free to interview people so long as consent is secured from the interviewees. Reporters from Hong Kong covering the news in Lhasa are thus acting legally and appropriately, in meeting the public's right to information.
Furthermore, the guidelines issued by the Organising Committee of the Beijing Olympic Games state: "If security issues arise when journalists of Hong Kong and Macau are covering public spots news, they can ask for help from the security or aid officials on the spot." Instead of banning journalists from covering news in Lhasa, the local authorities should provide assistance to them to ensure that they can safely fulfill their duties.
The HKJA is concerned that banning Hong Kong reporters from covering news in Tibet will only arouse suspicion in the outside world that the Tibet government is covering up certain facts. It will be detrimental to the image of China as a country that is striving to be more open.
Reporters Without Borders also condemned China's censorship, commenting:
The freedom of movement for foreign journalists had been one of the few positive developments ahead of the Olympic Games, but this is now being flouted by the Chinese government facing Tibetan protests.
Yet again the Chinese government is trampling on the promises it made linked to the Olympics and has preparing the ground to crackdown on the Tibetan revolt in the absence of witnesses."
Online censorship is also veering into racism, with comment items urging the killing of Tibetan separatists, while all independent news on the events is being censored.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) issued a press release in which they said they had been informed that authorities in Tibet confiscated and deleted materials, including imagery and computer data, from some journalists. And that while China's domestic media has reported on the protests, the content of local reports focuses on the actions of protesters rather than those of government forces.
March 18: AlterNet.org reprinted a piece by Peter Ford, of Christian Science Monitor, titled China Cracks Down on Internet Freedom. The piece is a first hand report of the actions taken to suppress reporting of this most recent rebellion against suppression. He described the measures implemented by the government as follows:

Foreign journalists have been banned from traveling to Tibet and prevented by the police from reporting on protests by Tibetans in other Chinese provinces.
Domestic newspapers, TV programs, and Internet sites have carried only articles produced by the official Xinhua news agency.
News reports on international TV networks such as CNN and the BBC have been blacked out by censors.
He himself was stopped by police at a highway tollbooth on the evening of 16 Mar, and told he could go no farther toward the town of Xiahe, in Gansu Province of China, where Tibetans had been demonstrating against the government.
Two dozen other foreign journalists were stopped at other roadblocks around the town.
Some jounalists who had slipped in before the roadblocks were established were later escorted out of Xiahe by the police.
Two Canadian TV reporters were briefly detained by the police after filming in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery.
On 18 Mar, a police patrol even prevented Mr. Ford from visiting the remote and peaceful village of Hongya 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Xiahe, where the Dalai Lama was born.

Mr. Ford reported that the director of the Foreign Ministry's information department -- who in the past has helped journalists being obstructed by local police -- said that he can only: "cooperate with the local authorities. When there is some emergency, the local authorities have the authority to set up prohibited areas for outsiders." Mr. Ford also reported that the director defended banning foreign journalists from reporting on such emergencies on the grounds that it serves "the peace, stability and unity of this country".
At the time Beijing was bidding for the Olympic Games, back in 2001, the head of the Games' organizing committee, Wang Wei, promised the international media "complete freedom to report when they come to China." The new regulations were implemented in 2007 and say: "to interview organizations or individuals in China, foreign journalists need only to obtain their prior consent." One un-named reporter, described as a longtime foreign correspondent in Beijing, scoffed: "The regulations are fine when you want to interview pandas, but they don't work when you want to talk to Tibetans."

Return to chronology 10 Mar 2008