China Blocks Watchdog’s Press Freedom Website “Within Hours”

Text of press release by Paris-based organization Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) on 30 May

Reporters Without Borders today [30 May] condemned the Chinese government’s censorship of the Chinese-language version of its website, www.rsf-chinese.org, as a result of which Internet users in China are deprived of information about press freedom

On 25 May, the site was moved to a new web site server and within a few hours – we estimate between five and eight hours – access had again been blocked within China. The Chinese authorities very quickly blocked access when the www.rsf-chinese.org site was first launched on 3 May.

The cyber-police clearly used detectors containing subversive and pornographic keyword filters to identify undesirable new sites. Regardless of the consequences for Chinese Internet users, any IP address linked to a website considered undesirable is blocked without any warning. Tens of thousands of Chinese web sites are currently inaccessible online as a result of such measures.

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