Web Site Openings and Closings After the Taishi Protests and New Regulations

October 28, 2005

Chinese authorities shut down the Web site of Ai Xiaoming, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong province, on October 5, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported (subscription required) on October 7. Ai wrote an open letter (in Chinese) to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on September 15 that included a list of people in Taishi village who were detained the previous day.

Chinese authorities shut down the Web site of Ai Xiaoming, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong province, on October 5, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported (subscription required) on October 7. Ai wrote an open letter (in Chinese) to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on September 15 that included a list of people in Taishi village who were detained the previous day. According to the SCMP report, authorities closed the Web site after Ai posted a description of a September 26 incident in which security guards "smashed" a taxi that was taking her and two lawyers home from a visit to Taishi village. Men on motorcycles pursued and beat Guo Yan, one of the lawyers, when he left the taxi to seek help. Citing an unnamed source, the SCMP report said officials had warned Ai to forget the Taishi issue. Radio Free Asia (RFA) also quoted Ai on October 5 as saying "I think that there is actually very little space for free debate on this subject, and now there's really very little left to talk about."

An administrator at the Yannan Forum, an electronic bulletin board service (or "BBS") issued a notice on September 21 from the site's executive committee to all forum administrators that required them to "clean up" all of their forums. The notice specifically ordered that forum administrators delete all posts on both the Taishi Village incident and the case of Wang Binyu, a migrant worker who allegedly killed his employer for refusing to pay him back wages, according to an article dated September 23 posted on the Observe China Web site (in Chinese). On September 28, Yannan Forum operators closed the site completely and posted an announcement dated September 30 saying: "Beginning today, Yannan Net will be conducting a sitewide cleanup and reorganization, and the date of reopening will be announced separately." Neither notice offered an explanation for the censorship or the closure, but the closure notice came only days after the Chinese government's promulgation of new rules cracking down on news reporting in non-government sponsored Web sites. An employee at the Yannan Forum confirmed the closure (in Chinese) to RFA, but said he could not give interviews. RFA quoted Hou Wenzhuo, the head of the Empowerment and Rights Institute in Beijing, as saying that the Web site's closure was a major blow: "It really was one of the last resources left to us - one of the last bastions of justice and social conscience for academics and rights activists alike. A forum like that is really very rare in China. This really is a very big attack by the government on rights campaigners." Public security officers in Beijing searched the Institute and Hou's home on September 29 during the visit of Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

On September 28, the Beijing branch of the General Administration of Press and Publication shut down anticorruption activist Li Xinde's "China Public Opinion Supervision Net Law Blog," RFA reported (in Chinese) on September 29. Li, whose own Web site "China Public Opinion Supervision Net" was shut down by the Beijing GAPP in May 2005, told RFA that when he contacted the administrators of the site hosting his Law Blog, they said the GAPP had told them that the Blogs essays "had problems," and that if they didn't close the blog, it would shut down the entire site.

The "Democracy and Freedom Forum" Web site has registered with government authorities and reopened as Perspectives Net and Democracy and Freedom Forum, according to an October 6 Boxun report (in Chinese). Chinese authorities have forced the site to close down 46 times since its founding over three years ago. The site had to register with the government or risk being shut down as part of the Ministry of Information Industry's (MII) recently concluded crackdown on private Web sites. The MII conducted the repressive campaign pursuant to the Registration Administration Measures for Non-Commercial Internet Information Services issued in March 2005.