Associated Press reporter Christopher Bodeen writes about the steps taken by the Chinese government prior to Tiananmen Square protests 20th anniversary. Chinese authorities have rounded up dissidents and shipped them out of town. Now, they’ve even shut down Twitter.
China has the world’s largest online population, and Internet communities have proven increasingly influential in spreading word of events to everything from student protests to group shopping excursions.
People are going outside the normal, controlled channels to set up communities online, spreading information about campus unrest and other activities that the government considers to be potentially subversive.
Government Internet monitors have shut down message boards on more than 6,000 Web sites affiliated with colleges and universities, apparently to head off any talk about the 1989 events, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
Along with their usual methods of muzzling dissent, the authorities extended their efforts Tuesday to silence social networking sites that might foster discussion of any commemoration of the events of June 3-4, 1989.
