China punishes websites over 'coup rumours'
By Maganga Media - Mar 31, 2012
China has shut down websites, made hundreds of arrests and punished two popular microblogging sites for "fabricating or disseminating online rumours" seemingly linked to a major political drama that led to the fall of a rising star.
Authorities closed 16 websites for spreading rumours of "military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on in Beijing," state internet authorities and Beijing police said, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
The crackdown underscores the government's anxieties over a public that is wired to the internet and eager to discuss political events despite strict censorship and threats of punishment. "The root cause [of the censorship measures] is the lack of transparency of Chinese politics," Joseph Cheng, a professor at the City University of Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera.
"People do not believe what they get from the official media, which is strictly censored and controlled." Xinhua reported that Beijing police had questioned and admonished an unspecified number of internet users and detained six people who were not identified.
Since mid-February, Beijing police have arrested 1,065 suspects, issued warnings to the operators of more than 3,000 websites and deleted more than 208,000 "harmful" online messages during a crackdown on internet-related crime since mid-February, Xinhua said.
Aside from the 16 websites shutdown, two Twitter-like services run by Sina Corporation and Tencent Holdings, which each have more than 300 million users, said they would disable their comment functions for three days in a "necessary cleanup".
"Rumours and illegal, harmful information spread via microblogs have had a negative social impact and the comments contain a large amount of harmful information," said a message on Tencent's website.
"From March 31, 8:00 am to April 3, 8:00 am, Weibo's comment function will be temporarily suspended," said Sina, whose Weibo service is China's most popular.
SOURCE: ALJAZEERA
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ANDIKA MAONI YAKO KUHUSU HABARI HII
