Archive for
June 6th, 2005

   

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Tiananmen Square Blog Roundup

A small portrait of the translator Paul Frankenstein · 18:38 · East Asia

A quick roundup of posts and rememberances of June 4, 1989—the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The Global Blog Roundup will be posted later tonight.

Andrea from T-Salon posts a lengthy collection of links discussing what June 4 means sixteen years on.

Aahsun looks back at June 4, 1989 and reflects on how time and age can change one’s political approach. Fans of bridgebloggers, note the last paragraph in the entry…

Ming, a Chinese student, tries to reconcile the official version of events with other information available on the internet.

Alex, of Mine Blogging, mournfully says that “on June 4th, I was disgusted to be Chinese. From that day onward, I make sure people I meet know I am from Hong Kong, not China.”

Glutter says “I don’t always feel [that photograph] appropriate as the sole photo and symbol for the events of this day, for what that one picture does is sanitize the true story of June 4th 1989.”. She also has photographs of the annual vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park; Hong Kong Digital Vision has a similar array of astonishing photographs.

The Peking Duck tries to not write about June 4 but despite himself, expresses himself eloquently on the subject anyway.

EastSouthWestNorth looks at it two ways: first, he discusses the numbers game that the local press always plays with these large demonstrations. Then he asks the more provocative question: what’s really more important, democratic development or economic development?

Over at Simon World, Simon concludes that “democracy and freedom is not an inevitability for China. That’s the legacy of Tiananmen Square.”. His co-blogger Enzo talks about the square itself and how the actual events unfolded.

The Committe to Protect Bloggers sadly notes that the CCP had their own point to make that day.

Finally, Asiapundit has his own roundup of blog posts and news stories that recall that fateful day.

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Threat to Chinese blogs

Rebecca MacKinnon · 13:47 · East Asia

Reporters Without Borders has issued a press release today voicing alarm at “the Chinese government's announced intention to close down all China-based websites and blogs that are not officially registered.” The following paragraph is cause for concern:

A China-based blogger told Reporters Without Borders on condition of anonymity that the Shanghai police recently rendered his website inaccessible because it had not been registered. He then phoned the MII [Ministry of Information Industry] to ask what he had to do in order to register, and was told that in his case it was “not worth bothering” because “there was no chance of an independent blog getting permission to publish.”

Meanwhile, the Russian Interfax news agency reports China is using a system called Night Crawler “to block access to websites that have not been registered with authorities.”

We hope to have some updates with first-hand information here at Global Voices.

Andrea at T-Salon is also on top of latest developments.
Other news reports include:

..and if you haven't read it yet, you must read Steve Cherry's “The Net Effect: As China's Internet Gets a Much-Needed Makeover, Will the New Network Promote Freedom or Curtail It?”

Also keep an eye on China Digital Times for updates and links.

UPDATES:
(4:58pm EST) Nart Villeneuve of CitizenLab has an excellent analysis of what “night crawler” likely can and cannot do, based on the descriptions of it.

Andrea Leung of T-Salon emails to say: “FYI. Beijing's Public Security Bureau has just lauched a new web-registration drive on May 31 targetting Beijing-based sites and site owners. The campaign aims to prevent and clean out computer viruses on websites.” She points to this Chinese article about it on Sohu.com.

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