In China, even spreading rumours online about the government could give you a one-way ticket to prison.
ON the night of June 3, 1989, the Chinese military opened fire on unarmed civilians protesting its government’s actions, with hundreds, maybe thousands killed in Tiananmen Square.
This massacre is forbidden to be spoken about in China and any information online is strictly monitored to make sure people can’t access it.
This censorship is just one tiny part of the rule that the Chinese government holds over the country’s internet.
Civilian bodies lying among mangled bicycles near Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.Source:News Corp Australia
“If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect flies to blow in” — Deng Xiaoping.
Modern censorship in China was born in the 1980s when the country began to open up its economy to the rest of the world, bringing an influx of Westerners into the country. The Communist Party of China had to protect their values and did so by “swatting the flies” of other unwanted beliefs and ideals that may cause an uprising.
Former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping who spoke the quote above in which inspired China’s censorship programs.Source:AP
When the internet arrived in 1994, inevitably, Chinese citizens would use it as a communication and information platform and by 1997 the government began enforcing laws surrounding what people could read and write about on the internet.
Nicknamed ‘the Great Firewall’ by Wired Magazine in 1997, the Golden Shield project began to roll out. The deployment lasted took until 2006 and involved the Communist Chinese government using tens of thousands of police to roll out a giant firewall blocking banned sites, and a massive surveillance network, both on the streets and over the internet.
Censorship Today
Fast-forward to 2014 and the censorship of the internet has only become worse. No longer does the government only have the ability to block specific websites, it can make sure pages that contain specific words and phrases are blocked. It also blocks certain phrases and words from messaging services. Sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Wikipedia are all blocked in the country, and while Google is allowed, it’s a custom version that will only let users access search results that the Chinese government will allow.
The logic is the same as decades ago: to make sure that people can’t incite to overthrow the government and to try and make sure that the same values are kept with minimal Western influence.
News sources that are deemed to be defamatory are heavily censored, with topics like police brutality, freedom of speech, the Tiananmen Square protests and the whole Chinese edition of BBC News blocked.
You can’t handle the truth! One of the many words and phrases the Chinese government bans its citizens from knowing.Source:Supplied
More than 100,000 people are employed in China to police the internet around the clock, and since 2005 there have even been a group of paid people posting pro-government messages and steering online conversations away from ‘sensitive’ subjects.
In 2009, much of Western China’s internet was completely turned off for 10 months following deadly protests over social injustices that killed 197 people. The Chinese government blamed exiled members of China’s Uighur ethnic minority for using the internet to encourage hostility. It then cut off the entire internet and mobile network for 17 per cent of China’s population.
Police take on protesters calling for fair, unbias media coverage.Source:AFP
The fightback
Despite all its efforts, the government is starting to struggle to keep up. With every new piece of technology it uses to try and block the internet, people find ways to get around it.
Internet activists are known as Netizens and try to find any way possible to get around the state controlled internet, and often hold subtle protests over the internet in response to new decisions made by the government.
Chinese netizens use computers at an internet cafe in to access banned sites like Facebook.Source:AFP
Originally, users were able to get around sites by using proxy servers from outside the firewall and connecting to virtual networks that connects them to a computer outside of China, but many of these services have now been blocked by internet providers. Citizens are now looking to other methods like using the anonymous Tor network, which is becoming increasingly difficult but still possible. Certain free programs have also popped up that get around the Great Firewall using different methods, putting the government and its 100,000 internet police constantly on the back foot.
Netizens are still adamant about pursuing their internet freedoms despite harsh punishments from the Chinese government if people overstep accepted boundaries. Ironically, the latest punishment rules came into play just before a forum took place in China to discuss human rights development.
Pressure from both inside and outside China is building against the country’s censorship. The spirit of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square lives on, with many of the simple freedoms more elusive than ever.
Prime Minister Bob Hawke, cries during a press conference in reaction to the Tiananmen Square massacre in China in a 1989.Source:News Corp
[Source:- news.com]