| China shuts down liberal website after reform call |
BEIJING A liberal Chinese journal’s website was shut down on Friday, it said, in the latest and most prominent example of a crackdown by Chinese authorities against online freedom of expression.
The website of the Beijing-based Annals of the Yellow Emperor was closed days after it published an article urging leaders to guarantee constitutional rights including freedom of speech and assembly.
The publication, which has links with senior retired Communist officials, had argued in the article that China’s constitution lays out a road map for political reform.
Closure of the Annals’ website follows censorship by the authorities of similar calls made by a key liberal newspaper, while several influential Chinese journalists have had their social networking accounts deleted in recent weeks.
Attempts to access the Annals’ website on Friday led to a page with a cartoon policeman holding up a badge and the message: “The website you are visiting has been closed because it has not been filed on record.
“At around 9am today, the website was closed,” said a post on the Annals’ official web page on Sina Weibo, a website similar to Twitter, and later confirmed by the magazine’s editors said.
Editor-in-chief Wu Si said he had received a message from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China’s Internet regulator, last month stating that the website had been “cancelled”.
The information technology ministry did not respond to faxed questions and phone calls made on Friday.
The website closure came a day after censors blocked an article from popular liberal newspaper Southern Weekly which called for the realisation of a “dream of constitutionalism in China” so that citizens’ rights could be protected.
A propaganda official in Guangdong province, where the newspaper is based, removed the article and replaced it with a weaker message, said several current and former journalists at the newspaper.
Agence France-Presse
|
 |
|
|
|
