3 Jun 2009

China blocks websites ahead of Tiananmen anniversary

10:37 am on 3 June 2009

China is blocking access to Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, and its Hotmail email service, the company said on Tuesday, two days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The country's communist leadership sent soldiers to forcibly clear the square and surrounding areas on the night of June 3-4, 1989, ending seven weeks of protests calling for political reforms.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed in the crackdown, which remains a taboo subject in China.

Microsoft did not say when China began blocking the sites but Reporters Without Borders said it had been notified by Chinese web users that access to the websites began being blocked inside China on Tuesday.

"Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the blockage of a dozen websites such as Twitter, YouTube, Bing, Flickr, Opera, Live, Wordpress and Blogger in China," the media rights group said in a statement.

"The Chinese government stops at nothing to silence what happened 20 years ago in Tiananmen Square," it said. "By blocking access to a dozen websites used daily by millions of Chinese citizens, the authorities have opted for censorship at any price rather than accept a debate about this event."

Asked to comment on the Chinese moves, a US State Department spokesman said there would be a more expansive US response on Wednesday, but underscored that US policy "supports freedom of expression."

Google-owned YouTube has been blocked inside China since March.

China's foreign correspondents' association on Tuesday condemned moves by authorities in Beijing to block reporting in the run-up to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said it had received at least three reports of authorities blocking reporting at Tiananmen Square and intimidating journalists or their sources.