Friday, 15 June 2007

China Bans Flickr Over Tiananmen Photos

The communist China has banned photo-sharing Web site Flickr, Yahoo says. Reports, which conclude that Chinese authorities restricted access to the site mainly due to photos of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, are doing the rounds all over...

The communist China has banned photo-sharing Web site Flickr, Yahoo says. Reports, which conclude that Chinese authorities restricted access to the site mainly due to photos of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, are doing the rounds all over.

Yahoo Hong Kong spokeswomen Pauline Wong said Yahoo was aware that some pictures on the Web site could not be accessed from inside China, although the site as a whole could be browsed.

Wong said, “Yahoo recently did some testing on different versions including accessibility, then we found out some of the images cannot be surfed on the Chinese site.”

In 1989, thousands of armed protestors as well as citizens were gunned down in Beijing, China at the end of six weeks of protests for democracy. Hence any mention of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre continues to remain banned by the government. It has gone to such an extent that anyone speaking about it is imprisoned.

“We are investigating the issue. We know that it’s not a technical issue, there appears to be some kind of restrictions on access,” Wong said.

Wang also said that Yahoo did not receive any kind of notification from China.